The signal: half of America is worried about AI. Only 10% are excited.
On May 15, Eric Schmidt told the University of Arizona’s graduating class that “when someone offers you a seat on a rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on.” The graduates booed. The boos kept coming through the AI section of his speech, which a student coalition had organized for in advance.
The Pew Research numbers around the moment are the bigger story. Fifty percent of US adults say increased AI in daily life makes them more concerned than excited. Only 10% say more excited than concerned. Forty-seven percent have little or no trust in the US to regulate AI. The gap between concerned and excited Americans is roughly 5 to 1, and it has been widening since 2022.
Schmidt is not the only one. Multiple commencement speakers got booed nationwide for AI remarks during the 2026 graduation season, per NBC’s reporting on the trend. One speech is a one-off. Three is a pattern. The 5-to-1 Pew ratio is the floor under it.
The take. The room AI launches into has changed. Six months ago the room was indifferent. Now it boos on cue when the speaker reaches for transcendence language. Concerns about jobs, regulation, and trust are not coming from a fringe; they are the modal position. For builders, the lesson is not “AI is bad” or “ship less.” It is that the soft-power pitch no longer carries. Audiences arrive with a 5-to-1 prior against the hype, and adoption now has to be earned at the level of utility, not vision.
For your next launch: frame around utility, not transcendence. Show the failure modes next to the feature list. Skip the rocket-ship analogies. The room is louder, but it is also more honest about what it wants.
Sources: Pew Research key findings, Pew/Gallup composite via The Verge, The Verge on Schmidt at Arizona, NBC on multiple commencement boos.
More signals at dropwatch.ai. Want them in your inbox? Subscribe below.