That's like saying you shouldn't use a spellchecker because you should be learning the correct spelling yourself. But the point of a spellchecker isn't to replace learning — it's a tool that supports and accelerates your work. In the same way, AI tools aren't a substitute for understanding; they're productivity enhancers. They help you move faster, reduce routine effort, and give you more time to focus on deeper learning and problem-solving. Used wisely, they complement the learning process rather than undermine it.
A spellchecker is a linter. LLMs are a false equivalency.
I have yet to see AI “used wisely.” It is always precisely as parent complained about: people who neither know nor care to learn about the subject of their profession using it as a shortcut. If that is to be the state of the field, then salaries need to be _drastically_ cut. There’s absolutely no reason that you should be paid six figures to ask an omniscient entity a question, and copy/paste the answer.
> They help you move faster, reduce routine effort
You cannot understand something if you don’t understand its fundamentals. Reducing routine effort translates to “I don’t want to write boilerplate.” And that’s fine, if and only if you already know how to write it, what it does, and why it is the way it is. Wax on, wax off.
This analogy is so thin and your statements are so general that you're basically saying nothing in so many words. We should be critical of new technologies and endeavor to understand how they best suit us. The purported use cases of a spellchecker and an LLM completely differ. Their modalities differ. Their effect differ. Their implications for society differ.
Handwaving away any attempt at analysis and criticism or developing nuance and understanding is even lazier than my original snark comment.
The locomotive is an amazing invention that brought a lot of benefit to society. It also brought the train crash and radical transformation of various other social practices and functions. No technology is simply a "productivity enhancer" and nothing else. They all bring all sorts of new dynamics and unintended consequences.