>Students will want to understand why they are doing assignments that seem obsolete thanks to AI. This is a notion that now seems antiquated- and in some cases

>Students will want to understand why they are doing assignments that seem obsolete thanks to AI. This is a notion that now seems antiquated- and in some cases, because of mass abuse at the hand of various bad actors, rightfully so- in modern education outside of (I would imagine) strict religious schools. And I hated this kind of answer from an instructor myself- and my education began in the bad old days. But the short answer is you just need to do it, whether you think you do or not. The long answer is, internalizing knowledge is an important mechanism of education. The reason why is our brains are magnificent at synthesis- making new knowledge out of disparate bits of other knowledge. I think many of us look at AI and think they see synthesis, and a lot of the clever collation and presentation of pre-existing data sure looks like synthesis. But innovation, new connections, coming up with answers that defy logic, but work- human brains are ideally suited for this kind of inspiration and innovation. In order for this to progress, as it has the whole of human history, students need to assimilate this information. It needs to be learned, it needs to be internalized. Sometimes the best mechanism is rote memorization, which may seem like a waste to a generation of students contemporanous with the development of tools like ChatGPT, but it isn't.