The Graduates Are Using AI

It’s graduation season — and this year it feels especially personal. Not one, but two of my three favorite children are walking across a stage this spring. And somewhere between cheering on my own kids, wrapping up another semester with my students at the University at Buffalo, and adding a brief teaching stint at Daemen University “just for fun,” I’ve noticed one giant theme hovering over this entire cohort:

AI.

It’s the omnipresent Goliath standing in the background of nearly every conversation these students are having about their future. And what does that have to do with running a women-owned small business? Quite a bit, actually.

As our company grows and we begin hiring younger professionals, I think we have a responsibility to understand the environment they’re entering. This generation isn’t just graduating into a shaky economy or a competitive job market. They’re stepping into a professional world that seems to be changing by the minute, powered by technology that nobody fully understands yet, including the people building it. Nor does there appear to be any adults in the room managing the process.

That creates fear.

I know I certainly feel it.

In our office, AI is both exciting and unsettling. We use it. Of course we do. It’s going to edit this post. It helps us work faster, organize information, brainstorm ideas, and sometimes rescue us from staring blankly at a blinking cursor at 10:30 p.m. But there’s also this quiet fear sitting underneath it all; Will it replace parts of what we do? Will clients assume we’re pushing a button and then spending the afternoon at Fattey Beer Company instead of diligently researching, fact-checking, and doing the hard thinking our work actually requires? That tension is real.

So what have I been telling my students?

Use AI to strengthen your human intelligence while not replacing it.

Use it to draft the letter that saves you an hour, so you can spend that hour researching best practices or having meaningful conversations with people. Let it help summarize census data before you sit down with community residents to hear what they actually need. The census data is only going to state their community has higher poverty levels and they already know that. Let it organize your national park road trip so you can enjoy the ride a little more and stress a little less. (Although maybe double check the route suggestions. Hallucinations are real as AI may try to route me from Las Vegas to Haleakalā National Park by car, which would’ve been an ambitious undertaking.)

And what do I tell my daughter, the one graduating college with not one but two degrees and staring down a job market that feels… uncertain?

I tell her the truth.

Who knows how AI will reshape the landscape. But what hasn’t changed is that people still need to find things they genuinely care about and figure out how to build a life around them. Sometimes that comes through a paycheck. Sometimes through a business. Sometimes through investments, side hustles, or entirely unexpected paths. But the point is still the same: build a life you actually want around things that you are interested in. You’re smart. You’re capable. You got two degrees, all while also somehow maintaining a shall we say, ‘spirited’ social life.

And if I’m being fair, my generation, the generation of Stone Temple Pilots and Zima, can be a little judgmental about younger workers. We like to say they’re less loyal to employers or less committed to “the grind.” But let’s be honest. Companies everywhere are currently making decisions about what roles, departments, and responsibilities may eventually be reduced or replaced because of AI. These young professionals have every right to prioritize themselves and their quality of life, because businesses are absolutely making strategic decisions in their own best interests too.

Then there’s my youngest, the high school graduate, preparing to head off to college at precisely the moment universities are grappling with widespread AI-assisted cheating. As a part-time educator, I’ve watched this unfold in real time. This year, for the first time ever, I gave an in-person exam because AI use in take-home writing assignments had become impossible to ignore.

But even then, I still come back to this: Eventually, my daughter will walk into a patient room, and no patient is going to want to hear, “Well, AI thought this treatment plan sounded best.” Just like no lender, investor, or community partner wants to hear that a real estate project is financially viable simply because AI generated a convincing paragraph saying so.

Learning still matters. Critical thinking still matters. Human judgment still matters.

AI is a tool in the toolbox. Embrace innovation. Learn how to work smarter.

But also: go learn the material. Ask questions. Develop instincts. Build wisdom. Become someone people trust when the technology gets it wrong. Because eventually, somebody still has to be the human in the room.