Fuck AI

This is a deeper problem than AI, and my immediate thought is that arguing against AI usage would be much more tractable if you had conceded on schooling and framed your pushback against AI around usage outside of classes. Arguing not to use it for class is going to be an uphill battle because its prevalence there is a pushback against the rot in our education system.

A decent-paying job is a dramatic improvement in quality-of-life, and kids are heavily propagandized into believing that degrees are the path there. Most students don't actually want to be spending time on their classwork, they just feel pressured to. Educators understand this, so classes are built around the idea that students would rather pass the class than learn the material. The required curriculum for each class will be extensive enough that not a lot of time can be spent on entertaining tangential questions or digging into a rabbit hole a student is curious about, and students don't really consider doing that once they've internalized this culture that they're not to stray out of bounds for too long. That all reinforces that the purpose of taking a class is to pass it. (If it's not clear, I resent the role I play in this, but I have to pay my own bills and if other professors get students that don't have a decent understanding of a prerequisite they took with me that will quickly become a problem.)

AI usage in education has fully exposed what a lot of us already understood. Students who use AI do so because they see their time as valuable and they see schoolwork as burning that time. They don't think schoolwork is good for them, they just feel societal pressure to accomplish it.

It's much harder to successfully argue a point when the person you're trying to convince thinks they'll have to sacrifice something if they concede. That much time is a nontrivial sacrifice. There are countless solid arguments that AI is poison, but if someone legitimately wouldn't be learning something if they didn't feel forced to and legitimately believes the only purpose for learning it themselves is to earn a grade, that might be the worst focal point to start from.