Should you use AI for a task? Here’s a simple way to decide | Bruce Schneier

Bruce Schneier, a public policy lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Toronto's Munk School, argues that students who use AI to complete writing assignments are wasting their tuition money, drawing on AI researcher Daniel Meissler's distinction between work and the gym to explain why the process of learning matters more than the output.

Should you use AI for a task? Here’s a simple way to decide | Bruce Schneier By Bruce SchneierSource: The Guardian Technology https://www.theguardian.com/us/technology Sometimes, what matters isn’t your output but what you put into the process. Think of it like work v the gym I teach public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Munk School at the University of Toronto. And it will come at no surprise to you that my students regularly use AI https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessment/2026/07/08/brown-professor-suspects-most-his-class-used-ai-cheat to complete their writing assignments. Doing so is a waste of their tuition money. But if their entire career is going to include AI writing assistants, why shouldn’t they embrace their future? The best way I’ve found to explain the dilemma comes from https://danielmiessler.com/blog/keep-the-robots-out-of-the-gym the AI researcher Daniel Meissler: it’s the difference between work and the gym. Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/24/should-you-use-ai Get AI news in your inbox Daily digest of what matters in AI.