Arizona college skips over several graduates after an AI malfunction at commencement ceremony

The president of Glendale Community College in Arizona was met with loud booing by students last week after she admitted the artificial intelligence that was being used to read names skipped over some graduates at the commencement ceremony.

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Tiffany Hernandez, the college president, addressed the crowd toward the end of the ceremony to provide instructions on how to ensure everyone gets to walk across the stage. It was at that point that she explained the college was using an AI technology to read names, according to a YouTube stream of the ceremony.

“So here’s what’s happening: We’re using a new AI system as our reader,” Hernandez told the students, who met her with overwhelming boos. “Yup, yup. So that is a lesson learned for us.”

She explained that they would not be able to redo the walk to include all the names on the screen, but those who were not initially called would be able to come onstage for their photo. Students were instructed to form two lines and provide their name to be announced through the microphone.

“I am so sorry,” Hernandez said. “There’s plenty of opportunities, I hope, to take some really good pictures and to celebrate you with your loved ones as well.”

Maricopa Community Colleges, which oversees the Glendale college, said in a statement that it communicated an apology directly to the students over the technical malfunction.

“While the issue was corrected during the ceremony, we are sorry for the disruption it caused during what should have been a celebratory moment for our graduates and their families,” the statement said.

The incident happened as commencement speakers across the country were booed for bringing up AI in their speeches to new graduates this year. At the nearby University of Arizona, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed while tying the technology to the rise of the computer during his own college years.

Schmidt spoke about how computers “democratized knowledge” and have been able to give everyone a voice — though it also “degraded the public square.” He began to draw a parallel between the rise of the computer and AI when he was met with an outpouring of dissent from the crowd.

“I can hear you,” Schmidt said amid the jeers. “There is a fear … there is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics is fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create, and I understand that fear.”

Boos also resounded at the University of Central Florida commencement this month when Gloria Caulfield, a real estate executive, called AI the “next industrial revolution” in her speech.