Google CEO Largely Avoids Discussing AI In Stanford Commencement Speech (nerds.xyz) 37
BrianFagioli writes: Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivered Stanford University's 2026 commencement address, but despite leading one of the companies at the center of the AI boom, he spent very little time discussing artificial intelligence. Instead, the speech focused on optimism, working on hard things, and following your interests. The omission is notable given how many graduates are entering a job market being reshaped by AI. While Pichai briefly referenced a "rewiring of technology," he largely avoided discussing AI's impact on careers, automation, or the future of work. Was the Google CEO intentionally steering clear of a controversial topic, or was he simply trying to deliver a timeless commencement speech rather than a technology-focused one? Hyping AI during a commencement speech has been a surefire way to get boos -- unless you're Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, who reminded college graduates that they already posses "AI" of their own: "actual intelligence."
You can read Pichai's commencement speech here.
"If you're not from here, California is advertised as being really lush and green. But when I looked out the window, it was more... brown," said Pichai during his speech. "I guess I said this out loud, I'm not sure why. My host, Mrs. Jane Earl, gently corrected me. 'We prefer to call it golden,' she said.And that's exactly what I mean by choosing optimism. It's about reframing for the positive: Where I saw brown, she saw golden. This slight change of perspective had a huge ripple effect on how I thought about the world around me."
You can read Pichai's commencement speech here.
"If you're not from here, California is advertised as being really lush and green. But when I looked out the window, it was more... brown," said Pichai during his speech. "I guess I said this out loud, I'm not sure why. My host, Mrs. Jane Earl, gently corrected me. 'We prefer to call it golden,' she said.And that's exactly what I mean by choosing optimism. It's about reframing for the positive: Where I saw brown, she saw golden. This slight change of perspective had a huge ripple effect on how I thought about the world around me."
If you're afraid to mention AI at Stanford... (Score:4, Interesting)
AI as an industry is clearly doomed.
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Making money is more valued than making strangers happy.
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More like AI is just the elephant in the room. Everybody knows it is still there, but nobody wants to talk about it.
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How did you get modded interesting? You just make a blanketed bias statement and make no reference to why you hold this opinion -- how does that by the definition of "interesting", arouse curiosity or catch attention.
More so, Dijkstra basically says this, but he goes beyond AI and says computing is potentially doomed but if you were a nerd -- then you should be attempting to prevent that:
"The computing scientist’s main challenge is to prevent computing from being doomed to a state of perpetual mediocr
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It is extremely important to make that distinction.
Wrong. Stanford as an industry ... (Score:2)
... is doomed.
Who wants to be booed? (Score:4, Insightful)
AI at commencement speeches is a losing proposition. There is too much fear and angst at the moment. Even if LLMs create prosperity- and this is still speculation- that is cold comfort to college grads who are being told they spent $100,000 on nothing.
Re:Who wants to be booed? (Score:5, Interesting)
They're creating prosperity for the people in control of them. That's not even debatable.
Actually it is debatable. Anthropic is not making money, they are burning through VC cash. OpenAI is not making money, they are burning through OPM (“Other People’s Money”) as well. NVIDIA _is_ making money selling the AI hardware to the various companies pouring money into finding an AI model+business model that lets them make money. SpaceX’s xAI isn’t usefully broken out into it’s own P&L, but if you want to bet there IK’ll bet they are losing money at the moment as well, if you take the bet and lose you owe me one fancy Starbucks coffee and pastry, if I lose I’ll buy you 5 shares of SpaceX (that is around $1000 vs your $10). Did I forget anyone? Palentier? Also OPM (VC at the moment).
I doubt Apple or Google are making money on AI either, although it is more debatable because they have a bunch of products they can bolster sales with it (people buying a new iPhone because they want something they saw “Apple intelligence” will bring, totally forgetting that Apple hasn’t delivered on their AI promises from 2 years ago yet!), or Google may sell more smart speakers “powered by Gemini” then they sold of their prior assistant powered speakers, or get more Google searches because of Gemini answers. Although I expect the searches will merely manage to better hold onto market share by offering Gemini, which is important, but defending a multibillion dollar a year Business isn’t at all the same a “making money with AI”. Google has definitly said they are cutting headcount by using AI, but I’m not sure if they actually have a productivity increase or merely an increase in code per unit time even if the volume says nothing (or is of lower quality so it produced more bugs per unit code, and more critical outages per unit codebut more volume of code fixes!)
I’m not saying that NVidia are the only ones that can ever make money at this, or that only the hardware makers will ever make money, but that is how it is right now for sure.
Re:Who wants to be booed? (Score:4, Interesting)
I may be hallucinating, but I'm sure I remember an article recently about Nvidia lending to AI companies so they could buy Nvidia chips?
If it's true, giving money to customers so they can buy your products doesn't sound like the best business plan ever.
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If it's true, giving money to customers so they can buy your products doesn't sound like the best business plan ever.
Depends on how solvent NVIDIA thinks those companies will be. Also I think creditors frequently get paid earlier in a bankruptcy process (before investors at least). Maybe they have it structured like a mechanics lien where they get 100% of the loan back on bankruptcy (I don’t know if that is actually possible), or if they just huger that in a bankruptcy they will get about 80% of the loan back, so they want to make the loan as far ahead of bankruptcy as they can so they get a bunch of payments foll
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Prosperity will trickle down any day now.
Re: Who wants to be booed? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think anger might trickle up first.
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Even if LLMs create prosperity- and this is still speculation- that is cold comfort to college grads who are being told they spent $100,000 on nothing.
Especially considering any prosperity will probably go more to those guests making the commencement speeches than the graduates hearing them.
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I was in attendance. He got plenty of boos and loud-as-fuck whistling for the first 5 to 10 mins of his speech by morons who were protesting Nimbus.
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I have to commend him on powering through his speech during the whistling without giving a fuck .. but it took way too long for Stanford to kick the protesters out. Most too those protesters will go on to work in tech, and all they accomplished by it was screwing up people's graduation experience. I was waiting for parents near them to gather and beat the shit out of them. Probably would have happened if security didn't kick them out.
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Who wants to be booed? Me. I don't give an F about boos or if the world hates me. I care about doing the right thing. I'd give an F only if it were blocking me from doing things. If it's just morons booing me, let them do so until the cows come home (in which case they may want to try mooing instead).
Too many idiots are driven by wanting to be liked. It's an obsolete evolutionary trait.
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Stanford grads aren't idiots, though. They have at least a minimal level of intelligence.
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At this point CEOs promote AI only to people they can fire.
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One commencement speech about AI (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah .. it's not like Stanford kids could have done things like say founding Google.
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That was thirty years ago, when universities were full of smart kids.
Falling on tone-deaf ears? (Score:3)
Hyping AI during a commencement speech has been a surefire way to get boos [youtube.com] ...
Some, if not all, of those speeches are a little tone deaf. US students on why they booed their pro-AI graduation speakers: ‘They’re not reading the room’ [theguardian.com]
And there are several, so far,
- Florida students boo graduation speaker who called AI ‘next Industrial Revolution’ [theguardian.com]
- Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt booed after AI remarks at Arizona commencement [theguardian.com]
- Google: commencement AI boo [google.com].
The only way these commencement speakers could get booed more is if they fell asleep at game #3 of the NBA Finals. :-)
No mention of.. (Score:5, Interesting)
the students walking out in protest, like the pics I've seen?
"working on hard things" (Score:2)
The subtext of "working on hard things" is that you must work on things an LLM cannot do.
Re: "working on hard things" (Score:2)
The messaging in my management chain has been to use AI tools to work on 10 hard things at once.
Brown (Score:2)
His host said the color brown was actually golden. Sundar lost sight of this and the color brown meant something totally different to him. Thanks for the enshitification Pichai. Do no evil my ass.
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In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.
Calling brown grass golden? (Score:3)
If calling brown grass golden gives you some massive change in perspective, congrats. You've given up on reality and decided the fantasy is better. Welcome to "modern" thinking. We'll just fantasize our way out of this giant clusterfuck mess we've made of our world. Yay!
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We live in a world destroyed by industry, but the landscape is not a burnt wasteland, it's a golden land of opportunity. It's all in how you look at it... and how much money you have.
interesting way of shifting framework (Score:1)
Re: interesting way of shifting framework (Score:1)
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Also (Score:2)