Recent college grads are not very fond of commencement speakers hyping up a technology they see as a threat to their career prospects
A 2025 Harvard poll of young people in the US found that a majority see AI as a threat to their career prospects. Pagel and his peers are entering a job market where AI’s efficiency is already being used to justify mass layoffs. While it’s unclear which jobs may be entirely replaced by AI – and whether AI could eventually create more career pathways than it destroys – recent graduates are feeling betrayed.
“We’ve been pushed our entire lives to get our diplomas. Then you pulled the rug out from underneath us, and said: ‘Oh, you know those four years you spent learning how to do very specific things, you don’t need to do it any more,’” Pagel says. “We can get a computer to do it for two-thirds the price.”
So the 1950s and the so called nuclear age was driven by older generation in corporation, utilities, and politicians who thought it was the next great age. The next generations were the anti-nuclear movements.
Globalization too in the 90s and 2000s, was corporations of older generation and the next generations thought it was threating and full of shite.
Still, I think your point stands as this also involves creative professionals as well as white collar workers which those didn’t.