College used to be different. We had computers, sure, but when it was 5 a.m. and you were staring down a 9 a.m. deadline for a 10-page paper, there was no algorithm there to save you. You got used to the taste of 5 Hour Energy, or you accepted failure. Muscles honed by long hours in AOL chatrooms helped us crank out hundreds of words in the blink of an eye. Were they coherent? Probably not. But they were at least derived from real thoughts, however bleary they may have been.
Students today exist in a world in which machine-learning tools like ChatGPT have completely upset higher education. They’re using AI to write papers that professors are using AI to grade. Robot-assisted cheating has killed Princeton University’s centuries-old honor code. Teens now entering college are already hardened by years of outsourcing their education to a machine. The media frenzy surrounding AI in higher education has largely painted the Gen Z and Gen Alpha students adapting this new world as lazy or entitled, content to skate by on artificial brainpower. That may be part of it, sure. But it also sells college students a bit short: many of them are still smart enough to realize that AI is going to hurt them more than it helps.
The people who don’t realize this, unfortunately, are university administrators planning graduation ceremonies. This graduation season, multiple universities have trotted out utterly tone-deaf big-tech boosters in order to inspire a generation of students about to enter one of the most dismal job markets in recent history. At the University of Central Florida, commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield, a VP for a “smart city” development company, was almost booed off the stage when she called AI “the next industrial revolution,” speaking glowingly about the technology to a room full of students whose lives will increasingly be defined by it.
It happened again, when former Google CEO Eric Schmidt also tried to comment on the technology’s infiltration of every aspect of public life during Arizona State University’s commencement. “You will help shape artificial intelligence,” he began, before a chorus of boos broke out. “We do not know the precise contours…” he tried to continue, before being drowned out again. This process repeated several times throughout his speech. “When someone offers you a seat on the rocketship, you do not ask which seat. You just get on,” Schmidt said. “The rocketship is here.” The assembled ASU students did not want to get on, it seemed, regardless of the seat.
“His speech was incredibly disrespectful to students,” Olivia Malone, a recent University of Arizona graduate, told the Associated Press. “We as students are discouraged from using it and penalized for using it. And then to have our speaker be the champion of AI is just like, OK? Why?”
Big Machine CEO Scott Borchetta — famous for selling Taylor Swift’s catalogue to Scooter Braun — even got caught by the AI boos during a speech at Middle Tennessee State.
“AI is rewriting production as we sit here,” Borchetta started. There were some scattered boos from the back of the room. “I know it. Deal with it,” he quipped. “Hey, then do something about it, ok?” he said as boos continued.
The most surreal example came at Glendale Community College, also in Arizona, where university administrators bizarrely left off dozens of students’ names from the rolls during graduation due to a mistake they blamed on a “new AI system.” Again, a chorus of boos.
What we’re seeing here is less an unpopular technology and more a generational divide in how people see the world. Polling on the issue, thus far, is clear: Last year, Pew Research found that while 50 percent of all Americans are concerned about the technology, young people in particular are convinced that it will make people worse at thinking creatively and forming meaningful relationships. The dangers of AI, to people raised around it, aren’t hypothetical: they’ve seen it degrade their lives already.
“Our career path is compromised by AI,” Don Strouble, a UCF grad who was at the ceremony, later told KnightNews, UCF’s student newspaper. Strouble added that he thought people like Caulfield were trying to “force a state of acceptance about something hostile to not only our livelihood but the environment and the livelihood of people living near data centers.”
For an adult on stage, AI is a glittery new technology, one that makes them excited about the future. After all, their careers are firmly entrenched. Why would Eric Schmidt care if AI tanks the job market he’s sending students out into, so long as the value of his shares in Google are going up? His peers who are actively boosting the industry are an extreme example of this. The AI industry is similar to a classic pyramid scheme, where the bottom is falling out more and more every day. Everyone, for the most part, leaves college on the bottom of the pyramid. Only now, there’s no solid ground to stand on to even start to climb up — just a bunch of binary code, zeros and ones. America’s youth are smart enough to figure out that in this future, they’re the zeroes.
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Fans cheer in the streets of Port-au-Prince on Nov. 18, 2025 as Haiti celebrates qualifying for the World Cup.
Donald Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino stand as Spain celebrates its World Cup victory, on July 19, 2026.
America Got the World Cup It Deserves — Good and Bad
For the past six weeks or so I’ve been having a recurring fight with my friends. The dispute is over whether or not it’s ethical to support the U.S. national team in the World Cup.
To the vast majority of people reading this article, this is an absurd question: of course you can and should support the United States Men’s National Team, you weirdo. And look, I’m with you. But despite the fact that my friends are pompous dorks who are no fun to watch the game with, the question they raise is valid: Are our national teams avatars of the administration in power, or of the people and promise of that country?
If you believe the former, then yeah, it’s pretty fucking weird to support the USMNT. In doing so, by that thinking, you’d be engaging in a sort of athletic nationalism on behalf of a country run by Donald Trump, the most corrupt president in history, who forced the Iranian national team to flee across the border immediately after the final whistle of each of their games, whose federal police have shot numerous civilians dead in the street during a brutal immigration crackdown, who has started a war and supported a genocide while covering up his close personal friendship with the most notorious pedophile in modern history.
I mean just look at him. On Sunday he waddled down onto the field to present Spain with their trophy, lingering on stage with the victorious team as they tried to celebrate. The presence of Mexican President Claudia Steinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did little to dilute the image of Trump standing next to his crony Gianni Infantino, grinning at all the trappings of their power, hands caressing a trophy they’d done nothing to earn, lingering well past his cue to leave Spain to their glory. This World Cup, literally, had Donald Trump’s fingerprints all over it.
And yet, this was one of the most thrilling, beautiful World Cups in recent memory. That’s America, baby — contradictions abound.
Over the past five weeks of the greatest athletic competition on Earth, we’ve seen games that will literally never leave my memory. The final, which I attended yesterday in New Jersey, was remarkably forgettable — a 0-0 draw until the 106th minute, with Spain dominating every second of play and yet unable to score, undone time and time again by their insistence on tricksy passing and the personal heroics of Argentina’s goalkeeper Emi Martinez. The rest of the tournament, however, delivered. Cabo Verde, refusing to lose until the very last moments of the first knockout round, battling back again and again against both teams that would eventually play in the final. The sheer dominance of France’s Kylian Mbappe in front of goal, scoring at will, rivaled only by the aging GOAT Leo Messi and the Norwegian warlord Erling Haaland. England’s heroic stand at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, 45 minutes in the rain, a man down, holding out for the win and singing “Wonderwall” with what felt like half the stadium when it ended. Off the pitch, too: the Algerian national team being welcomed with open arms by Lawrence, Kansas; Scottish braves drinking Boston dry and partying wildly with Haitian fans that overcame so much just to be at the tournament. In Mexico, of course, the World Cup was everything, and its fans threw joyous South Koreans pumped full of tequila into the air, and celebrated in the streets with opposing fans even after their hard-fought defeat to England.
For the United States, what the 2026 World Cup was — what our team was, what our fans were, what our performance as hosts was — is a reflection of two things at once: what our nation is and what it can be.
Our star striker, Folarin Balogun, was born here by accident, a citizen only because of a birthright system that our president is currently trying to erase. We have Ricardo and Giovanni and Freeman and Zendejas. We have another striker whose name is Haji, for goodness sake. I look at that team and I see the country America can be, one in which any soul born in or living within our arbitrary borders can become part of a great national project that seeks to improve the lives of everyone it can. And yet, I can also look at that team and see a reflection of what the country is, because there is an anchor around its neck. When Balogun was — albeit unjustly — suspended for a crucial match, Trump himself stepped in. Cronyism saved the day and got Balogun reinstated, but ruined the fragile harmony the team had enjoyed. On the pitch against Belgium, they came apart. Temperamental star Christian Pulisic tried to go alone and then quit, aging defender Tim Ream’s legs failed him when he needed them most, a young goalkeeper slipped and fell when he had no good options for support.
What more can you say about a team, about our country? The team is an entity that is capable of more but still has so far to go, that is vulnerable to the same forces of avarice and selfishness and fear that plague our national identity writ large.
It’s possible to end the story there, to say good riddance to another failed year and fractured team. But I think that’s a mistake. I think if you believe that you haven’t really been watching. I think that’s also why it pissed me off so much that some of my friends wouldn’t root for the U.S. Yes, we have flaws, like every country involved in the tournament. Yes, our current team management and political government are filled with morons. But if you won’t put on the shirt you’re essentially opting out of our future. We can’t wait around for a better world, a better team, a better president, before we deign to lend our support. Progress only comes from effort, from caring, from believing in something more.
One of my favorite images of the World Cup was a crowd shot of the opening match against Paraguay in Los Angeles: every race, color and creed of American there is, all covered in red white and blue. It’s corny and trite, sure. But that’s what it’s all about. That’s why we’re here. You have to believe. The U.S. won that game 4-2. In four years, we’ll be even better.