AI, Education, and The Five Stages of Grief (Part 1)

The first in a four-part series on the emotions associated with adapting to a disruptive technology.

Fourteen years ago, I embarked on a career as a reporter in New York City. It was 2010, and everyone around me declared I was “Capital-C Crazy” for entering journalism and media during such turbulent times.

The media industry was already navigating a phase of compression and transformation that left it resembling a Frankenstein version of the traditional media I remembered from the '90s. Smartphones debuted in 2007, and social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat were rapidly gaining traction between 2006 and 2012.

But I did it anyway. Over the next six years, I was acutely aware of the constant rumblings about the struggles within media companies. I witnessed firsthand as esteemed trade publications in my field of corporate finance shuttered – even giants like Newsweek ceased their print operations.

All told, approximately 5,500 employees worldwide were laid off during my time at Thomson Reuters. After I voluntarily left in 2016 to pursue teaching, another 3,200 were let go. The magazine I worked for was sold off to a private equity firm, and my former colleagues have either left for financial analytics firms or stayed and watched as their roles morphed into analyst positions under a new corporate banner.

Why am I sharing this? Because for those six years, I buried my head in the sand. I was overwhelmed, confused, and just trying to keep my head above water as it was. I and my colleagues knew change was coming and/or happening already, but somehow could not adapt.

I had all the resources I needed to adjust. Yet, I didn’t—or perhaps couldn’t—make use of them.

I realize now that I – and others around me – were caught in the throes of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief. We were grieving the demise of the “old way” of doing things, caught in a cycle of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.

We were stuck in our emotions, and we couldn’t get out.

This brings me to today, in 2024. Education, along with several other industries, is experiencing the same type of reckoning that rocked the media markets from 1995 – 2024. Some teachers, administrators, and policymakers are overwhelmed, confused, or simply trying to keep their head above water as it is.

They are – in essence – mired in grief. Some might be angry that yet another pressure is being added to their plates, others might be denying that this change will actually affect them or change their way of living and working. Still, others are caught in bargaining or sunk into a depression over the rapid pace of global change. For my money, I agree with them. It really does feel unfair.

However, we cannot afford to remain stuck in these initial stages of grief. We must collectively navigate through these stages to stand a chance of adapting to the relentless advances of Big Tech, which seem determined to overpower each other at any cost.

I’m not the first person to point this out. MIT Research Affiliate Grant McCracken wrote about this in 2013 in the Harvard Business Review regarding the adoption of Twitter. Author and former Founding Partner of Nemertes Research Andreas Anthopolous argued in 2015 that traditional institutions would pass through the Five Stages on their way to Bitcoin and Blockchain adoption. Founder and CEO of Startup Professionals Inc. and former IBM Director Martin Zwilling wrote about it and pointed out that “the second mouse usually gets the cheese.” I wonder who the first mouse is in the adaptation of AI in education?

My journey through the media industry's upheaval taught me valuable lessons about the necessity of anticipating change and embracing it proactively – mostly because I didn’t do it when I had the chance. Today, as we face similar transformative forces in education due to AI, these lessons are more crucial than ever. Just as I should have been more proactive in navigating these stages of grief to adapt to a new media landscape, educators now face a similar journey. Recognizing where one stands in this process is the first step towards moving beyond mere survival to thriving in a new era.

The End and The Beginning

I hope this post acts as a pragmatic kick-starter and helpful guide to the process of adapting to disruptive technology. In an effort to carve up this very heavy topic into digestible chunks, I plan to write/release three more parts to this series in the coming weeks. I hope you come along for the ride.

Part Two: Strategies for Dealing with Professional Grief.

Part Three: How you can leverage this model if you have already reached ‘acceptance.’

Part Four: How I used AI to help me write these posts; A meta-cognitive look at working (and writing) with AI.

As I conclude this piece, I can’t help but think to myself – imagine if the cab industry had embraced this model soon after Uber was launched?