The $1 Notebook Fallacy

An NYU professor banned AI from her classroom. She replaced laptops with $1 spiral notebooks. Students now write everything by hand. The post got 11,000 likes on X.

I want to empower a million students with AI. Here is why she is solving the wrong problem.

Her students were not cheating because AI exists. They were cheating because they saw no intrinsic value in the assignment. When the purpose of an assessment is never transmitted, students optimise for completion, not comprehension.

She banned the calculator instead of teaching mathematics.

The fix is not removing the tool. It is redesigning the assessment so that understanding, not reproduction, is what gets measured. AI cannot fake understanding in dialogue. It can only fake it on paper.