Should You Use AI for a Task? Here’s a Simple Way to Decide

This essay argues that whether to use AI depends on distinguishing between 'work' tasks (where only the outcome matters) and 'gym' tasks (where the process of doing the task builds important skills). Writing assignments for students are gym tasks because the struggle of writing, thinking, and revising develops critical thinking skills that atrophy if outsourced to AI, even though AI can produce grammatically perfect essays that lack logical coherence.