I had an "argument" with a friend about this topic yesterday. He's on here, no idea if he'll chip in. I've been using ChatGPT to, amongst other things, help me write essays for the MBA I'm studying for.
I'm 35. I haven't written an essays since I finished my GCSEs, so nearly 20 years ago. Starting the degree, I was told I'd have to write these 3,000, 5,000, and even 15,000 word essays about things. I had no idea how to do that, so ChatGPT helped me structure it etc. His argument was that I should learn how to do it myself, which I appreciate, but I'd also argue that writing essays has no practical benefit to my life and is just a requirement to demonstrate learning in the degree.
Obviously the extent to which you use ChatGPT for this varies. I try and develop a structure for the work using it, then I input my original ideas, and we work together to write that up. I must admit that sometimes I get a complete mental block and ask it to do sections for me, but in that case I'm still getting it to incorporate my ideas. I did give up a bit on a recent literature review - I had no idea what that was until about two weeks ago when he showed me some of his own. I'd never even heard of one, and the guidance we got from the uni sort of suggested that you would already know what one was and how to write one - I didn't. In effect, it's just collating and reporting on information relevant to your thesis so that you can define your niche for the thesis. I think you could argue that you don't actually need any particular skill for that - it's just ingesting and regurgitating information in an organised manner.
So, I'm not sure where I stand. I get the point - we need to learn how to do certain things. But, in my mind AI would ideally be doing many, many things on our behalf, freeing humans from work to focus on creative pursuits, etc.
