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.”
This is a lesson I learned during COVID.
People’s stances are highly correlated with what makes them money.
That tells me that we will never have an honest society until you don’t have to constantly worry about making a living,