On June 14, Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivered a speech at the 2026 commencement ceremony of Stanford University. Instead of directly discussing artificial intelligence, he focused on the theme of 'choosing optimism,' encouraging graduates to view problems from different perspectives. Pichai mentioned that other tech leaders had recently faced student backlash when discussing AI in university speeches, so he chose to avoid controversial topics. Instead, he shared personal experiences and called for facing the challenges brought by technological change with a positive mindset.
