To everyone who plans to graduate at the University of North Georgia (UNG), 

Starting this year, UNG will no longer have a speaker read out the names of graduates as they walk the stage to receive their diplomas.

Instead, they will be instituting an AI system where graduates will be required to scan a QR code to have their names read out by a synthetic voice. I believe that this is a very poor decision by the school and greatly hinders the joy each student feels when they walk the stage. 

As a graduating student who is studying Digital Art, one of many fields that are severely impacted by the mass implementation of AI, I along with my classmates are not comfortable with what we feel is yet another encroaching step against the warmth of human-to-human connection.

Where formerly, a speaker would take time to mention the name of every single student who has dedicated years of strength and sacrifices, emphatically congratulating them on the final day of their endeavors. It will now be lost in place of the school's higher interests of getting through the ceremony as unnecessarily fast as possible.

This deprives each student of the gratifying feeling of their name being mentioned with passion and pride by a professor who cares far more than an automated system ever will.

Graduation is so much more than just another school event to set up and take down within a week. It is a celebration of each student's success, a reflection of how much they have grown, and the ultimate payoff for their hard work. What UNG plans to do does not represent how a university should handle recognizing their graduating students as they advance to the next chapters of their lives. 

Additionally, I believe this change contradicts UNG's self-proclaimed views against the use of AI. I fail to see the difference between using ChatGPT to speed through a class assignment and using an AI system to speed through a graduation ceremony.

If you are a student who does not want your name to be read through a machine when you graduate, please sign and share this petition to convince UNG that we do care about having our names read by a human and that we deserve to have that essential human-to-human connection when we walk the stage, many of us for the last time in our lives. Thank you.

Sincerely, A UNG student of five years