In many college graduation speeches this year, speakers laud the accomplishments of artificial intelligence, and lecture students on how this is the way it’s going to be, so deal with it. Then when students understandably boo, the speaker demands to be heard and later complains about the reception received from college graduates. Maybe graduation speakers should give the students something more useful: mustard seeds.
I’m not joking. Those may even matter more.
The boos are held up as an example of intolerant undergraduates, ill-prepared for the new world. In reality, students are going to a 2+ hour ceremony, get 10 seconds to have their name read off as they receive their diploma, while the college probably pays plenty to someone who is already rich, who uses their 20-30 minute speech to make the argument that a system they purchased (and probably didn’t invent) to lay off thousands of workers is superior to these grads.
Imagine a gridiron club where the keynote speaker comes in from another school, tells them that their success isn’t worth very much, claims that another conference is superior and they should just deal with the new world, and say their best athletes should transfer over to schools in that new conference. Young people have a saying: “Read the Room.” It’s perfect for this setting.
College leaders whose instructors have been vainly trying to make sure their graduates can write a paper themselves instead of letting AI do all the work should also read the room as well.
I also don’t support “destroying AI” for the sake of doing so, as one speaker suggests. I am also very aware of AI’s capabilities, having written about the subject for publication long before most people were aware of it. It’s got its strengths, and its glaring weaknesses. I also know that most “tests” that claim AI is superior to humans in writing and art wouldn’t pass an Institutional Review Board. And I also know that companies that laid off swaths of human employees are having to rehire a whole bunch of them. The speakers should’ve noted this.
The best AI speech came from Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak, who gave his own graduation speech at Grand Valley State University. He challenged students to use A.I., “Actual Intelligence.”
That got him a lot of cheers. And he’s right.
Every year, for our graduating political science majors, I buy a book for them, based on their interests, and write something in it, encouraging them to continue to do great things in the service of others. This year, borrowing an idea from our United Methodist Church pastor Rev. Thomas Martin (and Matthew 13: 31-32), I added something new for our graduates.
Years ago, we had a top graduate get accepted to law school. It meant leaving our college, which she called home, having befriended many faculty and students. So I brought some of our undergraduate students on a law school field trip to her school. I showed everyone all of our past LC grads at her school. Then I let her know the hard truth. Her law school would be different from what she enjoyed at LaGrange College. But maybe she could plant some mustard seeds to make her law school a little more like our college. Within weeks, she developed a running club for law students and had formed a law study group for new students, where she met her future husband. She made a big difference for incoming law students just as stressed as she was.
On Honors Day, I gave each political science graduate a small packet of mustard seeds that I got from our church. And our graduates will plant them. Maybe they’ll create a new system that changes our lives, or a support system for fellow graduates trying to cope with change.
Just like in the Bible, their effort is likely to be small at first, but it will surely grow into something meaningful if it is guided by faith that each of us is a Child of God and has meaning. That’s more powerful than any Tower of Babel technology that a human can build these days.
John A. Tures is Professor of Political Science and Coordinator of the Political Science Program at LaGrange College, in LaGrange, Georgia. His first book, “Branded”, is available on Amazon. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu.