Microsoft president Brad Smith has a message for students booing tech CEOs: I agree with you, but…

Microsoft president Brad Smith has spent four decades around computer scientists, and he says they keep making the same two mistakes. They overestimate how fast a new technology will spread, and they underestimate what people are capable of. The Microsoft president put both ideas at the center of a 3,000-word essay this week, written in response to a wave of graduating students who booed every mention of AI during their commencement speeches this spring. His read on those boos isn’t that the kids got it wrong. It’s that the tech sector did.
“The reactions of this year’s graduates are a powerful wake-up call for the tech sector,” Smith wrote in the post, titled “AI, jobs, and the next generation,” published on Microsoft’s blog on June 10. “Hopefully, leaders across our industry will listen and seek to learn from this reaction.”