{
  "id": 20119751,
  "title": "The five stages of AI grief",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/15/the-five-stages-of-ai-grief",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-11-15T05:42:03.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Korea Times",
    "slug": "the-korea-times-koreatimes",
    "url": "https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/opinion/20261115/the-five-stages-of-ai-grief"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Cambridge — In her groundbreaking work, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross outlined five stages of grief that people often experience when faced with a terminal diagnosis: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It seems that many of us are now undergoing a similar emotional journey as artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance at an unprecedented pace.\n\nAt first, AI seemed like just a sophisticated search engine or a chatbot capable of simulating human-like conversations. Consequently, it was relatively easy for many to dismiss the potential impact of this technology on our lives and professions.\n\nHowever, as AI became more pervasive and began to make appearances in various aspects of our lives, frustration began to set in. The technology started showing up in lawyers' briefs with fabricated case references, in software code containing errors and security vulnerabilities, and in customer-service bots that deviated from their scripted responses. For academics such as myself, the emergence of AI-generated student essays and assignments added an additional layer of irritation.\n\nYet, as AI continued to improve, a curious transformation began to occur. The frequency of fabrications, hallucinations, and mistakes associated with AI began to diminish. It became increasingly apparent that the technology was becoming more reliable and accurate in its outputs.",
  "summary": "CAMBRIDGE — People facing a diagnosis of terminal illness, the Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross famously wrote, experience five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The same could also be said of our response to artificial intelligence (AI)’s rapidly expanding capabilities. At first, it seemed as if AI would not amount to more than a glorified…",
  "key_points": [
    "Five stages of AI grief mirror Kübler-Ross's model of human grief",
    "Initial denial of AI's impact as it appeared as a sophisticated tool",
    "Growing frustration as AI errors and hallucinations became more frequent"
  ],
  "editors_take": "The rapid shift from dismissing AI as a flawed tool to acknowledging its growing reliability forces a difficult emotional transition for professionals facing its increasing integration into their work.",
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}