Are we trying to produce adults who are able to think critically and creatively, and who reach their full intellectual potential, or are we trying to produce adults who can push a few buttons and blindly believe what the machine tells them?
While likely not how it would be work out in practice, you would hope that with better tools would also come higher standards. If you expect more complex, more thorough, and/or less error-prone output from students using AI then you don’t necessarily have to lower how much critical and creative insight they need to have. Like the difference in a test that does and doesn’t allow calculators, you always have to fit the assignments to the tools that are used for them.
> In fact, [writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own.
- attributed to Socrates by Plato. c.399-347 BCE. “Phaedrus.”
The point is that all technology is a tool. Whether it be writing, calculators, or various narrow AI software. We can either bemoan the loss of a now-less-useful skill (memorization, long division, longform writing), or learn how to use these tools to better achieve our goals.
Technologies develop for different purposes and have different effects. Modern digital technology has a very inhumane origin story, as noted in “New Dark Age” by James Bridle, and other works.
https://jamesbridle.com/books/new-dark-age
