you won't believe what happened at the stanford graduation

15 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this commentary, the speaker describes how Stanford students abruptly left the graduation ceremony while Google CEO Sundar Pichai was delivering his address. The speaker notes that Pichai deliberately avoided mentioning AI, likely due to earlier backlash at other graduations. Two primary motivations for the walkout are identified: (1) protest against Google’s reported contracts to develop AI for defense applications, and (2) a deeper, widespread anxiety about AI technology itself. The incident is framed as evidence that even at elite institutions like Stanford—key pipelines to Silicon Valley—debates over AI remain highly tense and polarized. The speaker also references reactions from notable Silicon Valley figures, such as the founder of Khosla Ventures, underscoring how the avoidance of AI topics by the Google CEO and the subsequent walkout signal the growing controversy surrounding AI.

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Yesterday Stanford students walked out on Google CEO Sundar Pichai in the middle of his graduation address. Obviously this is a PR disaster for Stanford, but what's craziest to me is the fact that the CEO of Google, one of the biggest AI companies in the world, purposefully did not talk about AI during his speech, which makes me think that he must have seen the horrible reactions to other graduation speeches earlier this year. So why did the students walk out? There were two main reasons. The first one is that the protesters were criticizing Google's reported AI defense contracts. And the second one is a much deeper anxiety happening right now around AI technology as a whole. This incident is showing us that even at one of the most elite universities in the world, arguably the most important pipeline to Silicon Valley, the conversations around AI is still so tense and polarized. We're also seeing very interesting responses from important people like the founder of Khosla Ventures, one of the most important venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. The fact that the Google CEO felt like it was safer to avoid talking about AI at Stanford university and still got walked out on might be one of the clearest signs of how controversial the technology has become.