UCF students boo commencement speaker over AI praise

Credit: Screenshot via UCF/YouTube

A University of Central Florida graduation ceremony turned into a brief humiliation ritual for commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield after she called AI “the next industrial revolution.”

The somewhat ill-timed comment, made at the graduation ceremony for UCF’s College of Arts and Humanities and Nicholson School of Communication and Media on May 8, was met with an eruption of booing graduates.

One person could be heard through the crowd grumbling, “AI sucks!”

Caulfield continued, “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives.” The crowd cheered.

After again mentioning AI, and more boos from the crowd, Caulfield responded, “Oh, I love it. Passion. Let’s go.”

Caulfield is the vice president of strategic alliances for real estate firm Tavistock Development Company; the founder and executive director at Lake Nona Impact Forum; and the president of the Lake Nona Institute, according to her LinkedIn.

She dedicated about three minutes of her 11-minute speech to praising the future of AI.

Her speech highlighted skepticism and trepidation around technological advancements in the past, like the launch of the internet, email and modern cellphones. She said, ultimately, “It was a game-changer for global economic development and the proliferation of new businesses that never existed, like Apple and Google and Meta and so many of the others.”

Caulfield also highlighted a varied list of “leaders of significant accomplishments” like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, former president Bill Clinton, pro skiier Lindsey Vonn and former NBA player Magic Johnson.

One graduate in attendance (and one of the many boo-ers), Nicholson School of Communication and Media’s Houda Eletr, called the speaker a “corporate mouthpiece.”

“To stand in front of a graduating class of artists and communicators and discuss Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz, is to spit on our efforts to flip the script. I’m embarrassed to have had to endure the most embarrassing, unskippable, tone-deaf, ad-like commencement. Boo to AI and boo to your agenda,” Eletr told Orlando Weekly.

“It will not be the rise of AI that is the next Industrial Revolution; it will be the boo-ers who refuse to take a check from the top 1% to present an empty agenda. It will be humans for humans.”

Houda Eletr is a former Orlando Weekly intern and currently a contributing writer.