Indian-American billionaire Vinod Khosla has slammed Stanford students who staged a walkout during Sundar Pichai’s speech — mistakenly believing that they were protesting the advent of artificial intelligence and how it would impact jobs for fresh graduates.
A section of Stanford’s graduating class did walk out during Pichai’s speech on June 14, but the reason was not AI. Instead, the students were protesting Google’s contract with the Israeli government.
Vinod Khosla slams Stanford students
Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, took to the social media platform X to call out students who walked out during Stanford’s commencement ceremony. He claimed that AI would actually benefit humanity and called the protests against it short-sighted and selfish.
(Also read: Stanford students stage a walkout as Google CEO Sundar Pichai begins speech)
“The stupidity of these Stanford students to take the greatest opportunity for equality in humanity ever and to really free humanity and go walk out on Google and Sundar Pichai that's pioneered that,” Khosla wrote.
“Biased, idiotic, short-sighted and very selfish. Selfish because they ignored the bottom 3 billion people on this planet that could benefit from AI and they are worried about their misinformed selfish self-interest.”
{{/usCountry}}“Biased, idiotic, short-sighted and very selfish. Selfish because they ignored the bottom 3 billion people on this planet that could benefit from AI and they are worried about their misinformed selfish self-interest.”
{{/usCountry}}Khosla could be forgiven for thinking that the protest was because of AI — a number of tech leaders in the recent past have faced protests and drawn boos from the audience for mentioning AI in their speeches.
In Pichai’s case, however, AI was not the reason for the protest. The walkout was organised by Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine and centred on Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud computing and AI contract awarded to Google and Amazon by the Israeli government.
According to a New York Post report, more than 100 students left their seats at Stanford Stadium while chanting, “Free, free Palestine” as Pichai began his keynote address.
Sundar Pichai at Stanford
For his part, Pichai sidestepped the very topical issue of AI entirely. The CEO of Google also refused to react to the protest.
As he walked out after his speech, he was approached by a BBC journalist who asked whether he had a reaction to the walkout. Pichai ignored the question completely and continued walking.
During his speech, too, he did not focus on AI. Instead, he spoke about his own time at Stanford and urged the students to adopt an optimistic attitude in life.
(Also read: Sundar Pichai recalls skipping Stanford class to visit Vegas: ‘First time my parents are hearing of this’)