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Technology leaders who have taken the podium as graduation speakers as of late may have figured out AI evangelizing isn\u2019t polling well with young professionals, and tweaked their messaging accordingly. But it turns out, AI isn\u2019t the only point of tension between high-powered speakers and graduates this commencement season.<\/p>\n
Google CEO Sundar Pichai is the latest tech executive to get the cold shoulder from graduates this year. Members of Stanford\u2019s 2026 graduating class walked out of their ceremony on Sunday as Pichai, who holds a master\u2019s degree from the university, took the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The walk-outs were organized by the Stanford chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a nationwide network of student-led activist groups advocating for Palestine\u2019s liberation. In a statement published on Instagram, the chapter accused Google of allegedly collaborating with the Israeli government and companies like Palantir, the AI and analytics firm that has inked contracts supporting the Israeli military and the Trump administration\u2019s immigration enforcement plan.<\/p>\n
Activists have long criticized Google for Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract Israel signed with Google and Amazon in 2021, which grants the Israeli military access to sophisticated cloud computing and AI software. Google\u2019s leadership has even been the target of protests from the company\u2019s own employees, as multiple pro-Palestinian groups have organized in recent years.<\/p>\n
When asked for comment, a Google spokesperson referred to Pichai\u2019s comments during his speech. Stanford University did not immediately reply to Fortune<\/em>\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n The activist group\u2019s statement said hundreds of students had been involved in the protest, and SFGate<\/em> reported Sunday around 200 graduates had walked out.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, Sundar Pichai was met with the sight of hundreds of students who showed they could not be allured anymore with the talk of a dollar or rapidly expanding AI,\u201d the group wrote in its statement.<\/p>\n Commencement speakers across the country have been met with widespread jeers over the past month, mostly in skeptical response to statements about a pending workplace evolution related to AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n When real estate executive Gloria Caulfield referred to AI as the \u201cnext Industrial Revolution\u201d during a University of Central Florida commencement speech last month, the audience replied with loud boos. A few days later at the University of Arizona podium, Eric Schmidt\u2014one of Pichai\u2019s predecessors as Google CEO\u2014had to pause a prepared statement on the inevitability of AI in young people\u2019s lives to make space for the audience\u2019s hisses.<\/p>\n Pichai was prepared in his speech for that line of attack, entirely avoiding any direct mention of AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI know today is about giving you all advice. But people have also been giving me a lot of advice on what to say. Actually, it\u2019s been the same advice, and it\u2019s about what not to say,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Without mentioning the technology by name, Pichai said AI was \u201ctruly immaterial\u201d to his speech, in which he pushed graduates to maintain optimism, find exciting pursuits, and to not take life too seriously.<\/p>\n While AI didn\u2019t directly disrupt Pichai\u2019s speech, the technology does feature heavily in the subject of the Stanford students\u2019 protests. AI services and software figure prominently in Project Nimbus, which critics say includes AI-powered data harvesting used for facial recognition and object tracking. Sunday\u2019s demonstration was the third time activist groups have organized walk-outs during commencements\u2014following similar-sized acts in 2024 and 2025\u2014each arranged to show support for Palestine and oppose U.S. ties to Israel.<\/p>\n While Pichai may have shied away from commenting directly on AI\u2019s promises and perils, away from the podium, the Google chief has been explicit about what young graduates could expect in the new technological age. When asked on the New York Times<\/em>\u2019 Hard Fork podcast last month about how he would navigate boos during his Stanford commencement speech, Pichai said he would entrust younger generations to handle the technological shift, while acknowledging graduates\u2019 anxieties.<\/p>\n \u201cAnytime we have driven technology progress I think it helps drive progress in the world, and in some ways these graduates are actually both going to be a big part of driving that progress and also dealing with the impact of that technology,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we have to be very mindful of that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nThe AI backlash goes to college<\/h2>\n