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

Harvard Kennedy School professor warns students that using AI for writing assignments wastes tuition money, citing a distinction between work and the gym from AI researcher Daniel Meissler to explain when AI is appropriate for a task.

This essay originally appeared in The Guardian. I teach public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Munk School at the University of Toronto. And it will come as 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...