Examining generative AI through the lens of transformative learning theory, this article conceptualizes AI as a potential disorienting dilemma for adult learners and educators. Critiquing AI applications using Mezirow’s (Cranton & Taylor, 2012) learning theory, this article shows that generative AI simultaneously short-circuits the kinds of cognitive engagement needed for transformative learning and upsets the learners’ most basic assumptions about expertise, intelligence, and learning. This article reworks the logic of transformative learning theory and establishes specific conditions that make AI-mediated learning possible as well as certain conditions in which AI-mediated learning precludes perspective transformation. The article has three theoretical contributions: (1) transformational learning necessitates irreducible personal engagement with premise-level complexity, (2) technological disruption triggers transformational learning only when it upends ontological, as opposed to procedural, assumptions, and (3) AI-mediated learning can only scaffold but not replace critical reflection, situating it as a “sophisticated” disorienting dilemma.
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