It is simple to me. If you know what you want to say but don’t know how to spell a word, don’t know where to find the supporting data, don’t know at what time some events happened which you wanted to quote, using AI is like using a tool. On the contrary, if you don’t know what to say from the beginning and just asked AI to generate ideas then you are not using AI as a tool, you are the one being used. As you said, critical thinking is important, I am not giving this up anytime.

Calculus may not be useful directly in your life, but knowing the methodology of division is surely a powerful part of critical thinking. Not knowing it and not using it are two different things.