Daniel Miessler has a a nice analogy for clarifying when artificial intelligence (AI) should or should not be used.
I think of it as Job vs. Gym.
If we're working a manual labor job, it's fine to have AI lift heavy things for us because the actual goal is to move the thing, not to lift it.
This is the exact opposite of going to the gym, where the goal is to lift the weight, not to move it.
In the first case we just want the output, and in the second the whole point is to do the work ourselves.
This captures a critical distinction for higher education. Are assignments done just to get the work done (lifting heavy things) or is the goal self-improvement (the gym)? When the goal is self-improvement, it is important to do the work ourselves. Personal growth won't be accomplished if someone else or something else does the work for us. Our neurons and muscles need the flexing to grow.
Clarifying this difference in purpose is critical for college students. Too often it seems that students approach assignments as a mere job to be done. That misses the point. Like athletes in the gym, the bigger goal is self-improvement. There's a higher goal to course assignments than simply crossing a task off a list.