The students booing artificial intelligence at commencements across the country are not just worried about jobs. They have learned an urgent lesson from the not-so-distant past.

They know that the familiar promise of empowerment and creativity will continue to give way to the pathologies of the online surveillance economy: viral slop, commercial manipulation and addictive apps — this time on automated steroids. 

The utopian promise of the tech industry is on life support. The hope that it would empower workers and revitalize democracy soured sometime between the massive data breach of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the rapid uptake of the term “surveillance capitalism” to describe the online economy. 

If Silicon Valley once received the enthusiastic reception reserved for “good guy capitalists,” those days are over, and deservedly so.

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The backlash is not limited to AI. The luster and hype surrounding the entire tech industry in the 1990s and 2000s, back when Gen Xers and millennials flocked to Silicon Valley, have fizzled, replaced by mass layoffs and a litany of social harms. 

It’s not only that Gen Z has lost faith in Big Tech. In the face of galloping economic inequality and democratic backsliding, many now view tech titans as greed-fueled latter-day barons of capitalism.

Gen Z has learned that what determines the future of technological innovations is not their inherent capabilities but the choices of the private organizations that deploy them. Students worry that AI will enhance the data-driven manipulation of consumers and flood the media environment with synthetic clickbait. 

These young people are already seeing what technology is doing to their lives and education and don’t like the results. At my own institution, students have formed a Luddite Club to resist the siren song of social media, and they’re not alone. 

In our short-attention-span era, it isn’t easy to hark back to the heady days of the early web, when we were assured everyone would benefit from access to the accumulated knowledge of the world and become active participants in well-informed self-governance. The futurist George Gilder predicted in the 1990s, for example, that the personal computer would become “a powerful force for democracy, individuality, community and high culture.” 

Today’s generation was not around for any of that, and now they are up against the reality the tech industry actually delivered — not the fantasy it sold. They are confronting the fact that what matters is not just the technology, but the social relations in which it is embedded.

Instead of cultural uplift and the creation of an informed citizenry, young people see billionaires profiting from pumping the most sensational and polarizing viral content into our news feeds. 

Instead of prosperity, they see the real wages of working Americans in decline and a country in which the richest one percent control more wealth than ever before. They see Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sending his fiancée and a pop star into the stratosphere while Amazon workers pee in bottles and collect food stamps. 

Instead of a vibrant information-enhanced multicultural democracy, they see a country sliding into authoritarianism and corruption at an unprecedented scale while platforms hire teams of psychologists to help addict young people to online brain rot. 

Related: What it’s like to enter the job market in the middle of an AI revolution

In the face of these developments, the tech oligopolists remain in something of a time warp. They look in the mirror and fail to see the caricature of extreme, unaccountable wealth they have become; they strain instead to recapture the image of themselves as hip young founders in hoodies parading through plush Silicon Valley campuses while promoting “don’t-be-evil” happy capitalism. 

The ubiquitous venture capitalist Marc Andreessen encapsulates this midlife crisis. A one-time founder of the web browser Netscape, he recently bemoaned the demise of the “deal” whereby tech moguls were revered by the media, awarded honorary degrees “from all the universities” and invited to “all the great parties.”

If tech billionaires are too cocooned in their fabulous wealth to absorb the lessons of history, this year’s crop of college students is not. They see a bigger picture: a world with powerful AI tools in the hands of a few companies devoted to using our own data to control and manipulate us. 

They see a present in which companies with unprecedented surveillance power are prostrating themselves before an increasingly authoritarian administration bent on targeting its perceived political foes. 

During his commencement address at the University of Arizona, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt responded to the AI skepticism of graduating seniors by urging them to play a role in shaping the future of AI. He was seemingly attempting to revive the promise of an earlier digital age. Schmidt, 71, is old enough to remember when those claims held currency, while today’s students are not. 

They have quickly learned what earlier generations have been slow to admit: When billionaires pledge to empower the world, they usually only mean themselves. 

Mark Andrejevic is a professor of media studies at Pomona College. 

Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

This story about why college students hate AI was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

The post OPINION: The days of ‘good guy’ capitalists are over. College students are right to turn against the tech elites appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

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I recently watched two videos. The second one is neat. It’s a whole bunch of New Yorkers celebrating in the streets after the Knicks won the NBA championship. At one point a dad says “tonight, we’re all neighbors.” Terrific.

The other video was filmed at Game Four of the playoffs. A man with a microphone interviews fans at the game, curious as to how much they paid for tickets. The dollar amounts are offensively high. There are a lot of references to wealthy parents. It is not a feel good video.

As far as I can tell, the point of the ticket price video is to make you feel astronomical levels of envy and resentment, and also to make you utilize a very specific app the next time you would like to attend a concert or a sporting event. You are supposed to get a tiny peak at life for these be-jerseyed Antionettes and be reminded that they are allowed to have fun in a way that you are not. “DADDY’S MONEY!” they squeal, taunting you, but also revealing a degree of shame. And in response, you mutter, “screw them,” but also, more quietly, “must be nice.”

This is how entertainment works now. You are technically allowed, as a plebe, to be a fan of international soccer, Taylor Swift, or Disney. But there is now a level of fan experience— being in the arena for the historic playoff game, screaming your lungs out on the floor of the Eras tour, spending a truly care-free day at a theme park— that is increasingly only accessible to the brahmins and plutocrats. The trend is well-documented, but also you have eyes and ears and a bank account. You have likely, at some point in the last year, considered, “could I go to Coachella?” or “wouldn’t it be nice to check out a World Cup match?” only to immediately have the blood drain from your face when you see the price.

Here are some sentences I read recently:

“Introducing the Truss Club, a new membership experience designed for those who want the best out of game day and beyond. Membership to the Truss Club provides exclusive access to The Truss, a new two-story, open-air club that transforms how you experience game day. The Truss brings together elite hospitality, elevated culinary experiences, personalized service and an elegant indoor-outdoor atmosphere unlike anything previously offered at American Family Field.”

That prose was written by my favorite baseball team, a breezy explanation as to why public funding from the State of Wisconsin, Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee is being spent for a decidedly non-public purpose. Put in non-marketing terms, the Truss Club will be a fancy new space available only to season ticket holders in the most expensive seats in the ballpark. Apparently the Milwaukee Brewers are one of the last teams in Major League Baseball to hop on this cool new trend (“extortion,” it used to be called). They had no choice, trust them. “Fans have increased expectations for their game day experience,” a team representative assures me in a separate press release.

Speaking as a fan, do I have increased expectations for my game day experience? I am told I should. I am supposed to no longer be satisfied with the thrill of drinking a Miller Lite outside in July and high-fiving a few strangers and agreeing with my children, for the millionth time, that William Contreras has the best at bat song. I am supposed to want to be in the Truss Club. Or at least I am supposed to accept that somebody wants to be in the Truss Club, and that they deserve to be there, away from me, because they are rich and I am not and that’s why, in just about every city in America, the old stadium got torn down and the new one got millions in subsidies and the primary difference between old and new was the addition of Premium Spaces.1

It does not matter if I resent the Truss Club or I desperately want to gain access to the Truss Club. What’s important, for the maintenance of a profoundly broken system, is that I accept that the Truss Club is inevitable, as is paying the cost of a used car for World Cup tickets, or being permanently priced out seeing your favorite artist.

The point is to make you feel like there is no realistic alternative. You can go to the comments of that video about the rich kids at the Knicks game and flood the zone with guillotine emojis. You can write 3000 word essays about enshittification and how the end game is to make the median experience so terrible (endless lines, overworked staffers, hot and tired human beings thrust together in ways that bring out our worse) that it incentivizes the fat cats to pay even more to separate themselves from the rabble. You can play the game for a night, maxing out a credit card for a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But whatever you do, you are supposed to accept that this is what it means to be entertained in the United States of America in 2026. Want to have fun? Like, the most fun? Get rich, or die trying.

Which brings us to the street parties. You did not have to be physically in New York City on Saturday night to understand how it must have felt. You do not need to be the kind of person who, like me, watched a million videos of other people flipping out with, around and on top of each other. You do not need to personally enjoy hugging sweaty strangers in the middle of a suddenly car-free boulevard, nor do you need any emotional connection to the New York Knicks. You understand what it looks like for human beings to entertain each other, to be both recipients and transmitters of joy.

You know it looked fun as hell, because before we were offered Premium Experiences you were human, and you knew how to have fun with other humans. You know what transcendence feels like to you— perhaps the swish of a ball through a net as the clock expires, or a series of perfect brush strokes on canvas, or the tone of four voices in harmony, or a perfectly timed punch line or jump scare— and you understand the profound human pleasure of sharing that experience with others.

New York City, I am so happy for you, and so grateful for your mayor’s attempts to democratize spaces and experiences that have been stolen from the public, so I will allow you all your paeans about how Saturday night proved something about your city in particular. I agree that it is easier, with proximity and walkability, to celebrate together. I love all that for you.

But this is not just possible in one city. And it is not just possible when a sports team wins a championship. There is a reason why I am currently hosting a relay of fifty free events in fifty states, and why those events include Polynesian fire knife performances in Hawaii, intimate group discussions in Nevada, trans movie nights in Utah, Indigenous punk rock shows in North Dakota, and family play time in Nebraska.2

We do not all need to have fun in the same way, nor to love the same things, but we are all equally deserving of being entertained, in public, for free.

That is and always has been a political statement, and for any social movement throughout history that actually loves people, it’s also been an organizing principle. You want me to believe that you’re serious about building a better world? Throw the best parties, and make sure that everybody who shows up feels welcome.

I resent the corporations that commodify our joy. I hate this broader system of haves and have nots. And I’ve got plenty of not-too-tender feelings about the wealth hoarders themselves, occupying their luxury boxes and driving up prices for the rest of us. But I also feel sorry for them, because the more they buy into the idea of exclusivity and isolation, the more that they’ll never actually experience the best parts of being alive.

Here’s a rendering of The Truss Club, in case you’re curious.

You’ll notice it’s mostly empty. And half the people are alone. So goes the exclusive experience.

Here’s another image, also including a human being with their arms raised in elation. You tell me which one you believe more.

The most fun place in the world isn’t a luxury box. It is not a Truss Club. It is not backstage at the concert. It’s not on the other side of a velvet rope. It’s always been wherever you are having the time of your life and you run into another stranger and they are having the time in your life and nobody around you is trying to rip you off, they just made a space where you could be together. It’s when you realize that you didn’t have to prove yourself, and how in fact there’s nothing to prove. You remember that you are alive, and you deserve to feel like this all the time.

End notes:

1. A related essay, from the great Rebecca Solnit. And another one, from me, about singing out loud with strangers in a sports stadium.

2. I am very much not a wealthy person, but I offer just about everything I do (my trainings, virtually all of my writing, coaching and support for organizers) for free, without a paywall. There are some things that paid subscribers have access to (merchandise, because that costs a fair bit for me to buy, and our discussion space, because it does help if that community can be safer and more vulnerable), but the vast majority of stuff is just out there, for you. Heck, I'm even using the grant I got for the Interdependence Relay to pay other people instead of myself (hosts all get a stipend). I like doing it that way, though it’s only possible if I also include these little paragraphs about how I really do rely on the generosity of readers. So here you go: I bet you’re not wealthy either, but if you have the proverbial cup of coffee a month to spare to keep a space like this rolling, you’re doing a kindness both to me and to other people who also love this space but can’t afford to support it.

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3. I bet you want to learn more about that relay, don’t you? And even apply to host? Everything you need, right here! And a fun little carousel about it (on Instagram) here. Applications open now for hosts in IA, KS, MO, OK, AR, TX and LA.

4. Here is another video of residents of Zohran Mamdani’s New York being insanely happy. A very happy bing bong to all the people in this video, including the legendary Jane Pauley.

5. In case you are wondering, here is William Contreras’ walk up song. I am well aware that it is not merely his at bat song, that it is very popular throughout professional sports, but I’m sure neither myself nor my favorite catcher believe in gatekeeping.

We Are Losing the Ability to Discover What We Didn’t Know to Ask. “Scientific breakthroughs, artistic leaps, technological innovation — these rarely emerge from efficient retrieval of known information.”

The End of Reading Is Here. “The decline of reading will bring about changes of the same magnitude. It will affect our innermost thoughts, our society’s politics and culture, and how we tell the history of our civilization.”

I am not sure, exactly, how many ChatGPT signs, flyers, or advertisements I had seen without noticing. But I do remember that once I began noticing them, I saw them everywhere. A few blocks from my house, on a display easel: “Break Free Surfing California: SURF LESSONS VENICE BEACH.” On Instagram, a going out of business closeout sale for a skateboard shop. On invites to parties from friends, Fourth of July barbecues being thrown by bars, concert posters. I saw ChatGPT-designed advertisements for drug deliveries in Berlin, World Cup parties in France, junk hauling services in South Carolina, and fundraisers in Texas. The scourge of low effort, stylistically indistinguishable AI-generated signs and flyers have flooded both social media and, increasingly, posters, billboards, and signs in real life: “So ain’t nobody gonna address this ChatGPT flyer pandemic we’re in?” one viral post on Threads read last month.

“YOUR FLYER LOOKS LIKE GARBAGE,” a viral ChatGPT-generated parody of the genre posted by Jill Oliver reads. “Hey if this is your flyer, I’m not going, I’m not donating, I’m not sharing. Don’t ask me.” The “ChatGPT flyer pandemic” has become a big topic of conversation among graphic designers, musicians, bars, and small business owners who care about design and showing that they’ve put effort into something.

Once you notice a ChatGPT flyer, you will see them everywhere if you keep your eyes open. The art of the format is basically big, flashy bright text on dark background and an AI-generated or AI-altered image. There is almost universally a little box of generic icons in a bulleted list vaguely tied to whatever event or business it’s advertising, lines coming off of the text to emphasize whatever it’s saying, and either bolded words or underlined text and tons of arrows and checkmarks haphazardly strewn throughout. It is easier to just show you what they look like than describe it, because they all look basically the same:

Of the many things AI is ruining, higher education is up there–graduation speakers are urging students to sacrifice their futures to a handful of rich guys, school systems are shoehorning it into every possible crevice, and even students fear it’s rotting their brains. It’s not news that students are using AI to cheat, but I’ve never seen it summed up so neatly until today.

Inside Higher Ed ran an article Wednesday titled “Brown Professor Suspects Majority Of His Class Used AI To Cheat.” It tells the story of Roberto Serrano, an economics professor at the Rhode Island school who noticed a huge discrepancy between his students’ grades on their take-home midterm and their in-person finals. 

Before we go on, I just need to highlight this bonkers lede, which states that “Quite a few students had expressed anxiety about being in a classroom after a gunman killed two students and injured nine in a December mass shooting at Brown, and so ‘it was appropriate,’ [Serrano] said, to allow students to take their exams at home.” Students got a take-home midterm because they were afraid of being shot–and then they used this both reasonable and horrifying accommodation, Serrano suspects, to use AI on their tests.

Students scored an average of 96 on the take-home midterm, where Serrano said grades traditionally fell between 65 and 80. The unusually high grades and some odd arguments students made led Serrano to suspect AI, so he told students that the final would be taken in class. If the final grades matched the midterms, no problem; if they didn’t, he’d void the midterm grades and make the final count for more.

Eighteen students dropped the class, nine just didn’t take the final at all, and here’s how the rest of them did: 

absolutely insane story, and yeah, just looking at this chart... with the exception of maybe two people, this entire class was cheating like motherfuckers

[image or embed]

— Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li (@sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com) July 8, 2026 at 7:38 AM

First, let’s shout out Student 22, who got a 55 on the midterm and a 59 on the final, the only student to show improvement. As someone who worked their ass off in a few grad school classes only to just barely pass, I feel confident this is the real human work of someone who is in way over their head. Keep on trying, buddy.

Let’s also give a nod to Student 1, whose 95.5 on the midterm and 95 on the final feel like a real kid who’s good at this class. If you simply must cheat on a test, sitting next to them and trying to see their paper would have been the classic, and more environmentally friendly, choice.

There’s a few other plausible spreads here, so it seems likely the entire class didn’t cheat. But then you get the mind-blowing bits: students who scored 100 on the midterm only to get in the 40s and below on the final.  Student 41 went from 94.5 to 37. Student 52 went from 100 to 19. Student 54 went from 100 to 16.5. A couple students went from 100 to zero. Inside Higher Ed writes that “the average score on the final was 48.6 percent—by far a historic low, [Serrano] said. Previously, the average final exam score had never dropped below 65 percent.”

Serrano made the final worth 80 percent of the students’ grades, and passed anyone who got a 40 or above, lowering his traditional cutoff of 50. Nineteen students subsequently failed the class.

The bigger point of this story is Serrano’s efforts to get Brown to address the cheating. He claims the university has shown little interest in dealing with his situation, and this also highlights the lack of systems many schools have for addressing mass cheating as opposed to looking at each individual case. 

But I simply cannot get over seeing the situation laid out like this: the stark visual evidence of exactly how little students are doing their own work, and how much AI seems to be doing the mental lifting for them. AI is often touted as a tool of convenience, doing the scut work around knowledge tasks to free people up for the more interesting bits. But that’s so obviously not what’s happening here. Many students didn’t struggle without AI; they failed spectacularly, or, maybe more damning, didn’t even bother to try, dropping the class or just not showing up. This is at Brown, one of the nation’s top schools, and students are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars not just to not learn anything, but to humiliate themselves in the process. 

My own higher ed grades were occasionally sub-par, but at least I did it to myself. Have some self-respect, kids.