As AI anxiety continues to spread across college campuses, one tech leader managed to do something increasingly rare during a commencement speech: mention artificial intelligence without getting booed.
During his address to the Grand Valley State University class of 2026, Steve Wozniak delivered a line that immediately resonated with students entering an uncertain job market shaped by automation fears and shrinking entry-level opportunities.
“You all have AI—actual intelligence,” Wozniak said, eliciting applause from the Michigan audience. “My entire life in the technical world, I’ve been following people who were trying to figure out how to make a brain. I was at a company where the engineers figured out how to make a brain,” he continued, saying it “takes nine months.”
The moment stood in sharp contrast to several recent graduation speeches where executives promoting AI were openly heckled by students. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was recently booed while describing AI as the next technological revolution, while other ceremonies have faced backlash over failed AI systems and concerns about the future of work.
What made Wozniak’s speech different was tone. Rather than framing AI as an unstoppable replacement for human labor, he reminded students of something increasingly absent from the AI conversation: the value of human creativity, emotion, and imperfection.
Wozniak has also been openly skeptical about generative AI itself. Earlier this year, he admitted, “I don’t use AI much at all,” adding that many AI-generated responses feel “too dry and too perfect.”
That sentiment appears to reflect a broader cultural shift. The public conversation around AI is moving beyond fascination with capability and toward deeper questions about meaning, trust, and what people actually want from technology. Increasingly, audiences seem less interested in hearing that machines are becoming smarter—and more interested in hearing why humans still matter.
And for one graduation crowd at least, that message landed perfectly.
Source: Reporting on Steve Wozniak’s Grand Valley State University commencement speech and public comments on AI (2026).
