05/26/2026
This past weekend, thousands of college graduates booed when AI was mentioned at commencement ceremonies.
That happened at my daughter’s tech-heavy campus, UC Berkeley.
It happened again at the University of Arizona, where former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was jeered by thousands of graduates after saying AI would touch “every profession, every classroom, every relationship.”
And right here in Arizona at Glendale Community College, an AI system malfunctioned while reading graduates’ names during commencement. The college president had to explain the error to the crowd.
More boos.
These aren’t students who hate technology.
These are young adults who did exactly what they were told to do.
Study hard. Get the degree. Take on the debt. Build the résumé. Prepare for the future.
And now they’re stepping into a job market that suddenly feels uncertain, unstable, and rewritten in real time.
I understand the reaction.
Because underneath the boos wasn’t anger. It was fear.
Fear that the rules changed right before they crossed the finish line.
As a financial advisor, I keep thinking about something bigger:
That fear doesn’t stop at graduation. It follows these students home.
It shows up at dinner tables. In conversations between parents and kids. In quiet questions about careers, financial independence, student loans, and whether traditional planning still works in an AI-driven economy.
And honestly, I don’t think our industry is talking about this enough.
Most advisors are still focused solely on markets, taxes, retirement projections, and investment performance.
Those things matter. But increasingly, clients also need help navigating uncertainty around work, identity, and what economic opportunity looks like for the next generation.
AI isn’t just another technology cycle.
It’s reshaping how value is created. How companies hire. How careers evolve. And eventually, how families define financial security.
The graduates booing this weekend weren’t rejecting innovation.
They were reacting to the realization that adaptability may matter more than predictability going forward.
That’s a conversation worth having with our clients. Especially the ones raising children who are entering this new economy.
Because the financial planning conversation of the future may not start with retirement.
It may start with:
“What kind of world are our kids graduating into?”
