Stanford grads walk out on Google CEO Sundar Pichai speech

https://twitter.com/maattttbrown/status/2066215255987163246

by sosomoxie • 1 month ago

224 168 1 month ago

Venn1• 1 month ago

Tech leaders from this era will not be remembered well.

There's not much good to remember them by for the past decade they have been implementing a global panopticon system etc.

At least in the 1990s and 2000s it felt they were doing some good stuff for humanity. But the 2010s and 2020s the masked pretty much slipped.

krunck• 1 month ago

They knew all along how their companies could profit from surveillance and propaganda.

LeFantome• 1 month ago

That is a bold prediction

Larrikin• 1 month ago

No it is not.

happytoexplain5• 1 month ago

It doesn't seem like a stretch. I don't know what you mean.

(You may disagree with the opinion of course, but "bold" is a counterintuitive adjective here)

mulr00ney• 1 month ago

How so?

ares623• 1 month ago

There's two opposing forces at work. Everyone wants to be Steve Jobs, and no one wants to be Steve Ballmer. So the only choice is to go to the extreme to stay as far away from the other end as possible.

layer8• 1 month ago

I'd take Steve Ballmer over most of the current big-tech CEOs, to be honest.

jameson• 1 month ago

I wonder which spectrum Steve Jobs would be on if he was still alive to this day.

happytoexplain5• 1 month ago

Hate him or not, Steve Jobs understood humans. He spoke and behaved as a human. He was flawed and may be considered "cringey" now, but I think he'd be liked better than the rest.

basisword4• 1 month ago

Steve Jobs? The guy who was adopted by working class parents, a hippy, with a Syrian immigrant father? I think he might view the world slightly differently than the guys born into wealth, who went to Ivy League schools, and who all seemingly share the same total inability to understand ordinary human beings.

penguin_booze• 1 month ago

I think you underestimate what the human attention span has become.

xnx3• 1 month ago

Big difference between owners like Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Musk vs. Sundar Pichai.

pm903• 1 month ago

I mean, sure there is a difference but for all intents their beliefs and actions seem to be aligned.

dylan604• 1 month ago

In net worth maybe, but in what other ways are you claiming there are large differences?

wxw• 1 month ago

What was the speech on?

hoppyhoppy2• 1 month ago

It was a commencement speech. Here's a transcript: https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/s...

inatreecrown2• 1 month ago

No mention of AI at all.

gritspants• 1 month ago

Seems this has more to do with Palestine and Google's involvement with Israel to provide cloud computing.

smallerize• 1 month ago

If only there weren't so many reasons.

themafia• 1 month ago

If only Google kept "don't be evil."

BLKNSLVR4• 1 month ago

In this seemingly forever argument, it seems there is some nuance in that Palestine is not Hamas and vice versa. One of the perspectives as I understand it is that Hamas is actually a threat to the existence of Palestine; the militaristic behaviour undermines Palestinian efforts at independence (and this is an avenue for exploitation by those who don't want to see an independent Palestine).

It is a similar situation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

You can argue that the government of Israel isn't the will of the people of Israel (in the same way the US government isn't the will of the people of the US), but in my opinion there's more of a separation between 'Palestine' and 'Hamas' than there is between 'Israel' and 'the will of the people of Israel'.

There's a lot of wrongdoing, which means there are a lot of innocents being harmed, and the harming of innocents is the greatest wrongdoing. Harm by inaction is also wrong. Harm by preventing aid and assistance is also wrong.

None of this stuff is easily answered.

The joys of ideology, or maybe more correctly, the joys of living amongst those who take ideology so seriously that they attempt to enforce their fantasies upon the real world.

In my personal logic bubble: Protesting in support of Palestine is not protesting in support of Hamas. Declaring support for Israel is protesting against Hamas and their acts of terrorism against Israel. I can do both of these things without being hypocritical (like I said, in my personal logic bubble).

keypusher• 1 month ago

Hamas has been the democratically elected government of Palestine since 2006. That was the year after Israel pulled all their military out of Gaza.

jmyeet2• 1 month ago

No, it's actually really simple. You start with these two questions:

1. Is Israel an apartheid state?

2. Is Israel committing a genocide?

At this point (IMHO) you need to do some serious mental gymnastics not to answer "yes" to both questions. As soon as you do, it gets real simple. The existence of Hamas doesn't justify either of these things.

The people who bring this up are engaging in respectability politics or engaging in weaponized cvility. Instead of addressing the underlying issues, the focus is on the methods and the actions of the oppressed when it is the oppressor that sets the level of violence. As Nelson Mandela put it:

A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.

People understood this quite clearly with apartheid South Africa. Can you imagine protesters having to do the performative "does apartheid South Africa have a right to exist?" pledge? No, me neither.

yodsanklai3• 1 month ago

There's simply no excuse for what Israel has been doing and everyone with a functioning moral compass should be denouncing it. Debating about Hamas is a distraction. They have a right to defend their country, but not treating a whole population as collateral damage.

donsupreme• 1 month ago

I am tired boss

ameminator3• 1 month ago

I mostly agree, except for the blatant calls for genocide from the Israeli side, and the blatant calls for genocide from the Palestinian side. I honestly don't know who to support - neither side wants to live with the other, and it seems, eventually, one of those sides will get their wish. To the detriment of us all.

sfifs• 1 month ago

I think Israel's leadership has very unwisely lost the Strategic plot here in favour of tactical political advantages of survival.

The history of middle East for the last 5000 years (since Sargon of Akkad) is replete with 'the king X "pacified" (the most commonly used euphemism) the people in the conquered territory'. It has never gone well for the victors under successors of king X, often within a generation or two.

In today's age when access to technology and information is such that any small sufficiently competent and motivated group can cause massive destruction, is it wise to keep creating motivated enemies and expect they will somehow never become competent or that the competent won't become motivated? It is doubly ironic given Israel's own defense industrial complex is filled with such small motivated and competent groups and the evidence of Ukraine/Russia conflict is staring in the face. This situation will blow up I fear within a generation unless Israeli society chooses different leaders.

TiredOfLife• 1 month ago

Protesting in support of Palestine is not protesting in support of Hamas.

Yet every Palestine support protest includes Hamas symbols and chants to exterminate a certain group of people.

Computer0• 1 month ago

Hamas is good. Supporting Hamas is not bad. The US military has done exponentially worse things.

paulddraper3• 1 month ago

it seems there is some nuance in that Palestine is not Hamas and vice versa

That's like saying the Nazis were not Germany and vice versa.

That is technically correct.

Hamas governs Palestine (to be precise, Gaza).

karmakurtisaani7• 1 month ago

One of the perspectives as I understand it is that Hamas is actually a threat to the existence of Palestine;

Don't forget that Israel financially supported Hamas for this exact reason.

xphos• 1 month ago

I mean the problem with this argument is that it is than transitively true than an entire people of any country with a crazy leader who bombs random countries in the middle east are inline and malovaent. I just disagree because that would imply the will of the US and its entire people is to bomb Palestine and Iran including these kids exiting there graduation. That argument just is factually debased. Collective blame of people for their government even in democracies just doesn't follow.

I agree that support for Palestine is not necessiarly support for Hamas and collective punishiment for Palestine from Hamas's actions is horrible but their is something to playing a useful idiot. And I think Israel and Palestine protesters both do this. Israel could 100% kill Hamas leadership and cause a democracy movement to elect a reasonable leadership in Palestine but they don't and don't want to. Palestine protesters actively persue a 1 state solution in its extreme to model it on the US and I don't think it works that way especially with such a vocal majority in Israel opposed to it. Hamas also don't really want a 2 state solution either because that would be real long term concessions and also a degradation of their authority because they are murders and losers but they are "protecting" some Palestians from Israel. Israel game here is they want prolong conflict and attacks like Oct. 7 because it justifies more annexation and attacks like Oct. 7 do give strong affimative arguments to take action against Hamas and Palestine whether you like it or not.

Long winded way of saying its a quagmire but if the US wanted to spend less and solve the problem they need to strong arm their ally to engage in generating a democractic uprising against Hamas in exchange for concessions of land (mostly settler land) after a new democratic state reins in their radicals. I think Palestians would jump at that idea but Hamas would be extremely anti that idea because they would be the pariah in their society. Its pragamtic solution but also 1 that requires long term follow through that is also likely to fail. To me that the Kotkin approach no one is happy but progress is possible

keeda• 1 month ago

Aww, does that mean we won't get to see whether he could avoid getting booed when he inevitably mentions AI?

tmaly• 1 month ago

I saw someone post this was due to H1B visas. Then I drilled into the comments and saw it was a Palestine protest. It is getting hard to know what is true anymore as everyone is trying to push their own narrative.

red-iron-pine• 1 month ago

"flood the zone" means a constant, loud, never-ending set of narratives all the time.

people will eventually start filtering out narratives they don't want to hear, and/or just tuning out entirely.

this serves those in power, as they have the ability to now shape the narrative.

see also: "the russian firehose of falsehood" https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

alisonuserland• 1 month ago

To me, this seems like a rather unfortunate indicator of the death in intellectualism in this country. Granted I recall having stances and an optimistic naivete after graduating college and positions that, while still broadly liberal and left-leaning, shifted notably over the decades since. However, it pains me a bit to see how much "essentialism" stands as an argument and way of understanding the world, even to graduates of a top-tier institution. The argument that the Israel/Palestine situation is "essentially" genocide, rather than a tragic and complicated reality where the precise characterization of the situation is debated immensely and relies on ones own biases and expanding or narrowing the definition of the term. The further argument that since Google does business with Israel, they are "essentially" complicit and supporters of aforementioned genocide.

Depending on one's biases, my previous statement will likely elicit some sort of reaction, especially to college grads of this generation, without me ever stating a position.

This all to me is a rather unfortunate place for academia and intellectualism to have landed in the past decades. Or was it always this bad? I don't think so, I do think that always-online and recommendation engines and gameification of social media has created an acceleration of this.

But it pains me to think about where this is evolving to, and how these graduates will navigate life in the extremely complicated, suboptimal, often hateful or self-interested world we live in, if this is where they get to after graduating from a top institution.

rafterydj• 1 month ago

Agreed that thinking about the natural progression of today's circumstances are painful to think about, and about the death of intellectualism.

However, I'd like to play devil's advocate here, and speak to your "without ever stating a position" line. I'd argue that's just careful wording hiding under the mask of intellectualism.

The argument against Israel is, as you say, that it is "essentially" genocide. Speaking as one of the cohort (although slightly older than new grad) of which you're referring, every argument against Israel is to my view quite straightforward. Killing innocent people is bad, doing so for political reasons is worse, and when you do it to an entire city/nation/people you have genocide ipso facto. While it's not a very complex take, it really doesn't need to be when there is a preponderance of evidence.

Contrasted with the defense of Israel's actions, and you have a vast array of whataboutisms, downplaying, justifying by means of referring to authority (in Israel), calling critics anti-Semitic, etc.

In my personal experience I find the majority of pro-Israel arguments to be at heart anti-intellectual.

So when you dress up a complex situation by emphasizing how above and beyond all understanding it is, to me that feels you are intentionally muddying the waters to try to obfuscate the real problem. And that, I would say, is also anti-intellectual.

Just because we have generational problems with anti-intellectualism does not mean this particular circumstance belongs in that category.

sosomoxie• 1 month ago

The intellectual take is that Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide. That's what's backed by history and facts. The "god promised us this land" European movement is anti-intellectual in every conceivable way.

smashah• 1 month ago

Good kids - proud of them.

kunai• 1 month ago

So funny how a site called "Hacker News," once vibrant with the ethos of lighthearted disobedience and an inquisitive spirit, finds itself almost religiously in opposition to those who decry a (horrendously incompetent) dystopia and panopticon forced upon the population by the very forces this website's (former, I'm assuming) users claimed to hate so much.

a4isms• 1 month ago

The easiest metaphor for HN's evolution is that of gentrification:

An outsider community forms in a down-market neighbourhood. Lacking money and power, it makes its own culture. That becomes "hip," and those with money start buying property in that neighbourhood, displacing the very people who made it hip to begin with.

As with "hackers," so also with artists, musicians, bicycle messengers, dirtbag rock climbers, frisbee players, &c. &c.

sva_• 1 month ago

I wonder what percentage of total graduates walked out? The video shows maybe around 50 people at all. The title makes it seem like everyone graduating walked out.

happytoexplain5• 1 month ago

It does not.

Freedom2• 1 month ago

Which part of the title indicates that everyone walked out? I assumed it was merely some of the cohort.

paulddraper3• 1 month ago

"Pentagon leaders disagree with DoD budget cuts."

Technically, that just means at least two people at the Pentagon who qualify as leaders disagreed.

But it seems like broad opinion.

stevenwoo• 1 month ago

I went to the Electrical Engineering ceremony, the only speakers were from the faculty and one newly minted B.S.E.E. I biked there and saw there were a lot of smaller ceremonies across the campus outside of the stadium the photo captures.

arjie• 1 month ago

Speech itself was kind of fun: https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/s...

Pretty light hearted, and honestly considering that he's given a speech to an empty stadium before (as referenced in the first few sentences, I think he'll have handled it just fine.

But people have also been giving me a lot of advice on what to say. Actually, it’s been the same advice, and it’s about what not to say. People thought it would be really difficult for me; it is the last two letters of my last name, after all.

Ha, chuckle-worthy. Of course he'd find it hard to not pitch AI.

The only thing I find surprising is no-one points out that Stanford is a truly elite education system: Some 2 in 5 of students enter disabled, but almost all of them end up successful over time.

dumbmrblah• 1 month ago

Disabled in the sense they get more time to take tests.

watwut• 1 month ago

Not even that. Disabled as in "theoretically maybe could ask for some accomodation and maybe could get it". They dont get more time on tests, the moral panic is about them potentially being able to ask for more time if they cared.

Gagarin1917• 1 month ago

I wish I’d skipped my graduation ceremony as well. What a complete waste of time.

SpaceNoodled• 1 month ago

Not me. I always enjoy a nice opportunity to nap in front of a large crowd.

karmakurtisaani7• 1 month ago

President material right here!

Groxx2• 1 month ago

I skipped mine. Definitely worth skipping - I don't really need the super expensive pep talk by someone who I almost always really don't want to hear from, inspiration porn is free (and largely unavoidable) by the gigaton nowadays.

Save the money, fund the humanities with it. Maybe then the people planning these speakers would realize why people are booing and walking out.

squibonpig• 1 month ago

Yeah skipped mine too. Couldn't see the point and still did a grad party with the family so we could do something together.

jfkeinfmsn38• 1 month ago

Everyone loves the "free Palestine" slogan, but I've never actually seen the people who call it offer a concrete realistic solution that could achieve that - is it a two state solution? Is it a one state solution that will burst into a civil war? What's the plan?

What does it actually look like?

I still think a two state solution is the only realistic plan.

triyambakam• 1 month ago

I'm very uninformed but could "free Palestine" not mean a two state solution?

762236• 1 month ago

It's performance for social standing. They don't actually care.

blackqueeriroh• 1 month ago

Unless the people who shout “Free Palestine” are part of the Knesset or Hamas, I don’t think their offering of a “concrete realistic solution” matters one bit.

khaledh• 1 month ago

Free Palestine simply means a sovereign Palestinian state separate from Israel, which Israel has rejected many times over the years, most recently in the Knesset vote in February and July 2024, opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. Any time there was outside attempts to recognize Palestine as a state (e.g. through UN efforts) Israel responded with building more settlements in the West Bank.

kyboren3• 1 month ago

I've come around on the idea of a Palestinian state.

Once they have a state, the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank will finally have defined borders and a single sovereign. And history shows they can be relied upon to launch another genocidal war on Israel more or less immediately.

Then it will be a war between two nation-states, not a nation-state vs. an unaccountable terrorist organization that pretends to be a proper state when convenient.

The Israel vs. Palestine conflict will then fall neatly into the framework of Westphalian nation-states and when Israel proceeds to utterly defeat Palestine, demands their unconditional surrender, kills all who resist, annexes their territory, and forcibly re-educates any who remain (post-WWII style), it will all be 100% kosher according to customary international law.

GlacierFox• 1 month ago

It's a fashion statement for some people I've found. Like the Anarchy symbol on a T-Shirt. I've run in to people with such a hard line opinion on the matter who couldn't even point to where Palestine is a on a map.

deaux3• 1 month ago

At least in the US I can guarantee you that the % of hardline pro-Israel people who can actually point to Israel on the map is at least twice as low. I'm willing to bet my assets on that.

crote2• 1 month ago

Let's start by Israel no longer committing a genocide on the Palestinians and go from there.

Most "free Palestine" protestors probably don't care an awful lot about the final outcome of the conflict, they just want the mass killing of innocent people to stop.

There's a reason the movement only flared up when Israel started carpet bombing Gaza, and not during the mostly-quiet years before.

mhb2• 1 month ago

The "movement flared up" the day after Hamas invaded Israel.

poisonborz• 1 month ago

Maybe the shouts are less about "hey I have a concrete solution for a complex hundred year old ethnical problem" and more about "hey an authoritarian state shouldn't be allowed genocide of 100k civilians, or at least my state should not support them with weapons". Protests are about immediate action, solutions happen over long time, if ever.

zelphirkalt• 1 month ago

How can a solution ever be realistic, if on the other side you have: (1) Israel and its "we are the victims!" citizens, (2) Israel's military, bombing civilians, while they are trying to get to humanitarian aid, oh and journalists, especially, when they are coordinating with Israeli military to supposedly avoid being targeted, oh and whole news agency buildings, when they negatively report on what Israel is doing (3) Netanyahu, who starts one conflict after another, to stay in power, (4) Zionists, most of who are maximalist in their ideas about what land they want to possess, and assign a value of approximately zero to the lives of other human beings, nearing a racist ideology of "master race"?

(5) There are also complete idiotic and anti-semitic forces on the other side, who demand Israel to completely disappear.

What solution will be accepted as realistic by multiple sides of this conflict and acceptable enough for most sides to get everyone back to the negotiations table?

I have a very unrealistic idea about what should happen, which is directly opposed to factors (1) to (4):

Israel needs to return all stolen land and return to internationally recognized borders as a first step of showing good will. Israel needs to prosecute its own military personell for war crimes and for supporting armed mobs chasing people out of their own houses in the West Bank. Netanyahu and his gang need to be brought to Den Hague, and be put in front of the International Criminal Court. This is just the base justice level.

On the other side Hamas needs to disarm at least in majority. No more rockets launched. Also no more rockets launched from Hezbolla etc. Is the hostages situation still ongoing? Of course they need to be returned, if any still actually alive.

Next, Israel starts financing rebuilding efforts in Palestine.

Sounds realistic? Probably not, but that would at least be somewhat fair. Just not gonna happen with a US-supported dictator and his gang on one side and a guerilla militia on the other side.

Maybe the point is, that "realistic" probably != fair, and that is extremely painful. Maybe the point is, that fairness can only be achieved via a lengthy decades long process of first getting the weapons to cool down, and then holding all parties responsible at international courts. But guess what, Israel would never consent to be judged, because they do whatever the f they want.

DonsDiscountGas• 1 month ago

I've never seen a map of a two state solution which made any sense. It would need to be three IMHO.

wat10000• 1 month ago

I don't have a plan, but we could at least stop being part of the problem by not giving billions of dollars a year in military funding to their oppressors. If you really want to go crazy, we could stop arms sales to their oppressors altogether. That might not result in a free Palestine, but at least we'd no longer be contributing to its un-free condition.

basisword4• 1 month ago

The reason a two state solution seems unworkable is because the people who were there, and had their land systematically taken from them, are considered to be the ones that have to compromise. The world panders to the colonisers, who despite having a huge amount of wealth and global support, always want more than they've already got.

happytoexplain5• 1 month ago

Regardless of the details of this speech, I believe Sundar Pichai is uncommonly out of touch with reality and with the nation of the United States of America, even among tech CEOs.

He should step down.

iwontberude3• 1 month ago

He ruined Google, started by shattering the culture into a million pieces. He has negative charisma and no imagination. He was best as a mid level manager.

gaws2• 1 month ago

Top shareholders aren't concerned with "the culture."

criddell• 1 month ago

No chance. Have you seen the stock price lately?

xnx3• 1 month ago

Counterpoint, he is Google top CEO by stock percentage gain and possibly by management. Pichai successfully focused (can't say "pivoted" to AI because they've long been a/the leader) Google on AI (compare to Microsoft) and streamlined many of Google's redundant/fruitless efforts.

pm903• 1 month ago

If he was so good why did Brin have to come out of retirement to steer the ship?

Remember, transformers were invented at Google. They could have been the first to market starving out OAI and Anthropic. That they did not is clearly a huge failure from Pichai. Its astonishing he wasn’t removed for this blunder.

ChrisArchitect• 1 month ago

Associated story released after: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/sundar-pichai-stanford-c...

Gud• 1 month ago

GOOD!

I wish more people had the guts to reject Google and the panopticon they’ve built.

t0bia_s2• 1 month ago

Would be interesting to see how many of them actually use services of company that this CEO represents.

happytoexplain5• 1 month ago

It would be a petty gotcha with little meaning, more than interesting.

t0bia_s2• 1 month ago

Effectiveness is on of topics that they studied or should learn on uni. Not hypocrisy.

vonneumannstan• 1 month ago

90% of them would take an APM position at Google in a heartbeat. This is totally performative.

porridgeraisin• 1 month ago

Will they reject google / meta / etc internships and job offers? If not and I suspect not, it's the classic performative stuff activists around the world are used to.

Stanford grads walk out on Google CEO Sundar Pichai speech

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