Resonant Researcher

Reflections on CGP Grey, Automation, and the Future of Teaching

I recently revisited CGP Grey’s 2014 video Humans Need Not Apply, and it struck a chord-especially in light of this week’s readings from Collins & Halverson (Chapters 3 & 7). The video lays out a compelling, and at times unnerving, case for how automation and intelligent machines are rapidly transforming the workforce. Even traditionally “safe” white-collar jobs are no longer immune to displacement. This naturally led me to reflect on what we’re actually preparing students for in today’s classrooms.

As a music educator and researcher, I often find myself justifying our field through the lens of transferable skills: collaboration, creativity, discipline, emotional intelligence. And while those are valid, Grey’s video forced a deeper question: If many of the jobs we prepare students for today may not even exist in a decade, then what is the purpose of education? Are we teaching students to compete with machines, or to become more fully human in the ways machines can’t replicate?

That conversation became even more relevant in a recent discussion I had with a colleague. We wondered aloud whether music, particularly ensemble-based or classroom-centered instruction, might be one of the few spaces in education somewhat protected from AI’s growing influence. There’s something deeply human about real-time collaboration, breath coordination, and emotional expressivity that software still can’t emulate convincingly. Sure, AI can compose, mimic, and analyze music, but can it rehearse with a choir or lead a jazz combo through a nuanced improvisation? Not yet, and maybe not for a long time.

This dovetails with Collins & Halverson’s argument that education as we know it was built for an industrial world: predictable, hierarchical, and focused on training workers. That model no longer fits. In Chapter 7, their call for personalized, lifelong learning becomes all the more urgent when you view it through the lens of automation. Grey’s video doesn’t just sound the alarm, it challenges us to rethink everything: curriculum, pedagogy, and even our educational values.

If automation is inevitable, our response shouldn’t be to double down on test scores or job training for soon-to-be-obsolete roles. Instead, we should reimagine education as something transformational, not just transactional. Rather than training students for a career path that may disappear, perhaps our mission is to help them become nimble thinkers, reflective citizens, and expressive human beings, especially in the arts, where humanity still leads.