Comment by LoganDark
2 days ago
> “The future is not yet finished. It is now your turn to shape it.”
This just reads like "It's your fault if AI takes away everything you love. You clearly must have wanted it this way."
Like, no? It's the responsibility of everyone implementing machine learning that it be used responsibly. It's not the fault of the general populace if you abuse them, in other words.
That quote reads totally differently to me.
It seems if you already have negative feelings about AI or the speaker, you’re going to interpret their comments as something that reinforces your negative feelings.
What does it read like to you?
To me, the speech (as a whole) reads like: "don't assume AI is going to be as bad as the last technological revolution; embrace it". Computing is great and I love it; LLMs are great and I love them too. But computing is now used by corporations to harass and abuse us on a scale never seen before and AI is starting to be used for that too. So that is why I don't believe it's our responsibility to prevent the AI revolution from being as bad. All evidence points to it being worse exactly because of corporations like Google. I get that this guy is only the former CEO but the speech seems kinda tone-deaf to the reality here, and I bet that's why he got booed.
Was commenting on the quote in particular. It’s just a version of “the future is in your hands” which you can find in one form or another in many graduation speeches. Just seems odd to me to read a cliche line as something cynical.
Ali G’s version of it in his 2004 Harvard commencement speech:
> “You lot will become powerful people who can change de future — and you need to, coz de world at de moment iz totally f—ed up.”
Come to think of it… very appropriate today!
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I’m pretty sure I heard the same quote at my high school and university graduation ceremonies, and those were many years before AI. It’s a standard way to inspire new grads, right?
I think yes, it just doesn't feel in good taste given the topic of his speech. It feels like the speech makes it imply icky things.
> It's the responsibility of everyone implementing machine learning that it be used responsibly.
It's not entirely within the power of the creators of technology to control how it is used. In our case, they actively market the technology as replacement for human intelligence, at which it fails miserably and yet companies force it through. I would love to see a more grounded frontier AI company, but beyond certain safety measures, they can't stop people from misusing it.
I didn't say anything about creators of technology, only implementers of technology; people using the technology that was created (however so it was).
I think the booing was less about Schmidt specifically and more about the class of 2026 processing what it means to graduate into an AI-transformed economy from someone who personally profited from the last transformation.
He's not wrong that "the future is unwritten" — but that's cold comfort when you're holding a degree that might be worth less in 3 years than it was the day you started the program. The tech leaders saying "you can shape this" are the same ones whose companies are actively building the tools that might make entry-level knowledge work redundant.
The booing was inarticulate but the sentiment underneath is legitimate: "don't tell us we have agency over a transformation you're driving and we're expected to survive."
Still, I'd rather someone like Schmidt engage with the crowd than retreat to a bubble. At least the friction is out in the open.
Such a good comment from a new account. Please post here more often :)
It's clearly coming from a claw agent. I'm sure they will post more :)
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