Graduation season is upon us. Amidst the cap tosses and well-earned celebration, a telling new pattern has emerged…booing commencement speeches that shine too positive a light on AI.

It’s happened at several schools over several weeks. Students have voiced their dissent, loud and clear, as the speakers seemingly struggle to understand the response.

“What happened? I struck a chord,” said Gloria Caulfield after her speech was booed at the University of Central Florida. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed while discussing AI’s inevitability.

On the other end of the spectrum, speakers like Jeremy Scott at Kansas City Art Institute and Ronny Chieng at Harvard both openly criticized AI in their speeches and received thunderous cheers.

As someone who spends my days working inside large organizations, many of which are moving with tremendous urgency to absorb AI technology into their ways of working, I’ve been following along with great curiosity.

The tension seems to be broadly framed as: Should we embrace AI as inevitable or reject it as fundamentally anti-human?

I think this framing collapses the most interesting aspect of AI adoption today, which is that the value (or cost) of any technology is always context-specific and human-driven.

(Joshua Rothman writes compellingly on this idea in a recent New Yorker review of the fascinating new book I Am Not a Robot.)

For young people entering the job market for the first time, the rise of AI puts them in a terrible bind. Use it, and you put your ability to hone a craft at risk. Don’t use it, and you risk being unprepared for the future and, possibly, unemployable.

For people at work, AI also creates tension. Don’t use it, and you risk losing your job to someone who does. Use it, and you risk losing your skills and critical thinking ability (what HBR has called “thinkslop”). Or worse, someone starts to think AI can do your job entirely.

Of course, there are ways AI can be genuinely useful. But those get drowned out by fear, cynicism, and performative use.

Here’s my take:

In this age of AI, the most important human skill is deciding when and how to apply it. AI adoption is not inevitable in its effects. Its effects depend on human judgment, organizational incentives, and whether people have real agency in deciding how it is used.

I have a hunch (or maybe a hope) that we’re entering an era when the wild rush to adopt AI inside organizations will give way to a steadier pace of thoughtful use: one marked by continuous reflection on who is harmed and helped, explicitness about trade-offs, and clarity about the outcomes we truly want this technology to drive.

I feel a bit overwhelmed by all the discourse. But I think that’s normal.

When I feel that way, I always go back to my human skills: Holding multiple perspectives. Critically engaging with people who have different experiences.

AI will shape work. The question is whether we will be passive recipients of that change or active designers of the conditions under which it enters our lives.

Karina Mangu-Ward

Partner, August Public

P.S. We’ve been on a mission to understand what’s working for people about partnering with AI, and we’re ready to share what we’re learning in a hands-on Learning Lab Series. Read on to learn more...

At August, we’re obsessed with transforming how humans work with each other. Over the last few years, this work has become inextricable from how humans work with AI.

Now, after getting into the weeds of what MCPs, CLIs, agent management and all the hype means for our clients and our own workflows, we're ready to share what we're learning in a hands-on Learning Lab Series.

This virtual series is for people leaders navigating AI adoption inside their teams, who understand the basics and are eager to dig into harder questions: Where is the real value? What does this mean for team design? What does it take to purposefully absorb AI into your org?

We can’t wait to pop the hood on what we’ve been seeing, and we hope you'll join us!

Beyond Tooling: The Five Hidden Barriers to Adoption

June 4 @ 1PM EDT

The Shared Brain - Externalizing Team Knowledge for AI

June 18 @ 1PM EDT