This is also a testable hypothesis. I would like to see usage statistics before making assumptions here but my gut feeling is that an overwhelming AI usage (like > 90%) would fall into your category 1.

But even with category 2. I think that still does not absolve AI as a cheating machine. Doing research is a skill and if you ask AI to do the research for you that is a skill a junior developer simply never learns.

This is interesting and relevant: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095947522...

"The expertise reversal effect is present when instructional assistance leads to increased learning gains in novices, but decreased learning gains in experts."

There's a whole lot of depth to the question of how AI tools support or atrophy learning for different levels of expertise.

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