Confused About How to Feel About AI? Join the Club.
Let’s marinate in the discomfort
I have a confession: sometimes I’m absolutely sick of thinking about Artificial Intelligence. Because of its huge impact and implications on every part of society, it seems impossible to have neutral feelings about it. The gray area is unavoidable, and it’s exhausting.
And that exhaustion is especially real for those who work in education, where teachers are not just observing these changes, but being asked to respond to them, adapt to them, and somehow stay ahead of them. Whether we like it or not, educators are on the front lines of this AI situation: bombarded with information and opinions, and trying to find footing on ground that’s constantly shifting. The temptation to stick your head in the sand is real.
In our recent survey about educators’ use of edtech and AI in the classroom, we asked one particular question about AI use in schools. The question was: What is the most useful or exciting way you’ve used AI in education or seen it used by someone else in a school setting?
The responses were a mixed bag of creative and humdrum use cases — using AI to create a school song or translate a rubric into Spanish. And then we got some responses from teachers who are clearly not on board with AI. They included quotes like this:
I'm not sure it has a place in school settings.
I have not heard a single argument or example that has made me feel anything positive about AI in education. I believe using it is going to turn us all into morons.
When I have literally no time to plan, this is the only time I use AI (to create discussion questions when all I have time to do is pick something to read—I feed it the article and have it generate questions). I do not use it otherwise. I do not see others using it because my colleagues are also concerned, skeptical, and angry.
And then there was this one:
Most useful is drafting emails. However, I am extremely concerned about both the environmental impacts of AI, adults and young people's dependence on it, and the theft of intellectual property, especially art and writing, to train AI.
I love this response so much. This is exactly the ambiguous headspace I find myself in, too: sure, AI is helpful in getting stuff done and can do a lot of things better than I can, but there are also so many obvious, complex, and deeply worrying problems with it. This headspace is uncomfortable and overwhelming, and I think it’s where a lot of educators are right now.
Spoiler alert: There isn’t really a clear thesis for this essay. It’s kind of messy, entirely based on my own opinions, and asks a lot of unanswered questions. It’s an exercise in marinating in the discomfort of this moment and trying to parse through the conflicting feelings that many of us are feeling. And, for what it’s worth, it was written entirely without AI.
The Stuff That Makes Me Feel Good About AI
As my colleague shared in a recent essay, there are countless amazing ways to use AI in 2025, especially if you work in education. I’m no longer an ESOL teacher, but if I were one, you can bet that I’d be using AI constantly to do things like create side-by-side translations of texts or learn about the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of my students.
Lots of teachers we surveyed shared cool things they’d done with AI (or saw someone else do):
Helping me write the numerous college recommendations I need to submit every year! I can tailor them to the university or a scholarship if needed.
Using AI to take the role of a historical person to interview and learn from the responses about that person's perspective and historical role.
Khanmigo has been so helpful for me and and students! I love the lesson planning help, the newsletter feature, and the help it gives to students during independent lessons.
We've been pushing Khanmigo with students and teachers and love the "Chat with a historical figure" and "chat with a literary character". Also, MagicSchoolAI is huge for supporting teachers with differentiating instruction and building high-quality lesson plans and rubrics.
The success of AI tutors like Khanmigo is particularly exciting, since the data seems to show that it’s already having a significant positive impact on student learning.
For my own work, I use AI to expand ideas, organize jumbled thoughts, clarify convoluted sentences, develop a strategy for tackling a big project, and just simply get stuff done when I’m short on time.
This is all great stuff! Let’s take a moment to bask in the feeling of taking a few things off of that already too-full plate.
The Stuff That Makes Me Second-Guess That Good Feeling
The sheen really started to wear off for me once I started to use AI regularly, especially for writing. At the start, it was wonderful to have AI help me brainstorm ideas, create outlines, rephrase messy sentences, and help me out when I’m stuck on how to explain a concept clearly and concisely.
But here’s what I started noticing: I very quickly lost confidence in my own thinking, my own ideas, and my own words. I started feeling guilty for using a shortcut for something that I felt like I should be able to pull out of my own brain. For me, writing and thinking are deeply connected, so when I take the time and effort to write something out, I am able to think about it in a much deeper and clearer way.
Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” I’m no Joan Didion, obviously, but that quote lands hard for me.
I also think - and worry, deeply - about this topic as a parent. My son is only two, so he’s blissfully unaware of pretty much anything involving screens if it doesn’t involve Ms. Rachel or Elmo. But, oh man, do I worry about him entering school during a time when we are all just at the beginning of figuring out the best way to use this massively powerful new technology. I want to hope that it will transform education for the better; I’m just not sure that I want my baby to be the guinea pig for this particular social experiment.
Of course, I’m not the only one wrestling with this. There are plenty of people thinking and writing about how AI could transform education for the better — and just as many predicting that it will hasten the demise of intellectual and creative thought. Scroll through any social media platform (Substack included) and you’ll find a wide range of opinions — with the least nuanced takes often being the ones the algorithm rewards most.
And then there’s the other stuff I can’t ignore:
The fear that AI will soon (like, really soon) wipe out all entry-level white-collar jobs.
This crazy story:
Where do we go from here?
Teachers are on the front lines of AI adoption, and the temptation to stick our heads in the sand is real. But sitting in this gray area where curiosity, excitement, concern and fear converge, is exactly the work we need to be doing.
We don’t have to have it all figured out right now. What we do need is to keep asking questions, to stay curious, and to remember that our uniquely human capacities—our ability to think critically, communicate clearly, and make messy, values-driven decisions—are more important than ever. These are the skills that will help us navigate this moment with integrity and keep us grounded in what truly matters: relationships, community, and care for one another.
So, if you’re also feeling overwhelmed or conflicted about AI, you’re not alone. Let’s keep talking, keep reflecting, and keep making space for the discomfort. It might just be the most important thing we can do right now.