{"id":5106,"date":"2026-06-23T16:35:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T16:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=5106"},"modified":"2026-06-23T16:35:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T16:35:25","slug":"commentary-graduates-cheered-steve-wozniaks-affirmation-of-humans-over-ai-leaders-pay-attention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=5106","title":{"rendered":"Commentary: Graduates cheered Steve Wozniak\u2019s affirmation of humans over AI. Leaders, pay attention."},"content":{"rendered":"
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I was seated onstage at Grand Valley State University\u2019s commencement when Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak leaned into the microphone and reframed the entire conversation about artificial intelligence in six words.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou all have AI \u2014 actual intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The arena erupted. Not polite applause \u2014 genuine, full-throated cheering from thousands of graduates who had spent years being told AI was coming for their futures. What Wozniak gave them was something conspicuously missing from most public conversation about AI and work: a direct affirmation that human intelligence isn\u2019t a liability to be managed. It\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n

That moment didn\u2019t happen in isolation. This spring\u2019s commencement season produced a striking pattern. At the University of Central Florida, a speaker promoting AI was booed so overwhelmingly she stopped mid-speech. A CEO who told Middle Tennessee State University students to \u201cdeal with\u201d AI was jeered, then he taunted them \u2014 which made it worse. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was interrupted by roars of displeasure at the University of Arizona after invoking AI\u2019s inevitability.<\/p>\n

Most coverage has framed this as Gen Z anxiety or ingratitude. I think it\u2019s a clearer signal than that: A generation is telling us, with unusual directness, that the story they keep being told about their future is wrong. And the data is starting to agree with them.<\/p>\n

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York\u2019s 2025 labor market analysis found that recent philosophy graduates have lower unemployment rates than computer science graduates. Art history majors are more likely to be employed than computer engineering majors. McKinsey calls the pattern \u201creverse skill bias\u201d: Unlike prior automation waves, generative AI disproportionately displaces higher-educated knowledge workers. The jobs generations of students were steered toward are among the most exposed.<\/p>\n

The \u201clearn to code\u201d consensus that shaped a decade of education policy was a reasonable forecast. The labor market has now revised it.<\/p>\n

What Wozniak understood \u2014 and what the booed speakers kept missing \u2014 is the distinction between labor and talent. \u201cLabor\u201d is the industrial-era conception of human contribution: transactional, task-based, substitutable. It\u2019s what gets automated. \u201cTalent\u201d is something different: judgment in novel situations, ethical reasoning under pressure, the ability to build trust across cultural difference, the contextual intelligence to ask the right question rather than just optimize toward the assigned one.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

These aren\u2019t skills AI is developing. They\u2019re the capacities that become more valuable as AI becomes more capable.<\/p>\n

The market is already moving. Goldman Sachs\u2019 chief information officer has suggested pairing computer science with philosophy is worth serious consideration. Microsoft\u2019s CEO has noted engineers now use AI to write 20% to 30% of their code \u2014 which raises the obvious question of what differentiates the engineers who remain. The answer is consistently human: judgment, communication, the ability to define problems worth solving.<\/p>\n

The graduates booing this spring aren\u2019t anti-technology. They grew up with it. What they\u2019re rejecting is a specific posture: the one that treats their human capacities as a problem to be solved, their uncertainty as ignorance to correct, their future as something happening to them rather than something they\u2019ll shape. That posture is the labor model in action \u2014 humans as inputs to optimize. They\u2019re not wrong to push back.<\/p>\n

For business leaders and employers, the lesson isn\u2019t complicated. The talent pipeline you\u2019re drawing from is full of people who already understand that their value isn\u2019t in competing with AI \u2014 it\u2019s in complementing it. Your hiring criteria, your development programs and your management assumptions should reflect that. If you\u2019re still screening primarily for technical task-competency and treating judgment, adaptability and relational intelligence as soft bonuses, you\u2019re optimizing for the wrong century.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Wozniak built one of the most consequential technologies of the modern era. When he tells graduates that their actual intelligence is the thing that matters, he\u2019s not being sentimental. He\u2019s being precise \u2014 and the thousands of young people who cheered him knew it.<\/p>\n

The question for the rest of us is whether we\u2019ve caught up.<\/p>\n

Philomena V. Mantella is president of Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. She wrote this for the Chicago Tribune.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The story Gen Zers are being told about their future may be wrong. And the data is starting to agree with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nCommentary: Graduates cheered Steve Wozniak\u2019s affirmation of humans over AI. 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