I completely agree with what your saying, with one caveat. If I understand how the underlying physics and dynamics are working but don't know how to write the code then theres no world where I could make something like this. The way that I see it is that AI is a tool that really depends on the person.

If I were to be someone who just tells AI "implement drag" and lets it do it then sure, im not learning, but if I do my research outside and just use AI to translate what I give it into the language of computers I feel like im not only building something cool but im understanding whats happening because AI is just translating.

So basically while yes I do believe that AI can be harmful if you approach it inproperly, it helps novice programers implement cool things by just using english.

>If I understand how the underlying physics and dynamics are working but don't know how to write the code then theres no world where I could make something like this.

You could learn coding same way as you learned the physics and dynamics. Programming and physics aren't mutually exclusive. Actually every physicist is (was?) required to know (multiple) programming (languages).

>If I were to be someone who just tells AI "implement drag"

That'll mean at least you understand drag. Could do even worse, regards to learning at least rather result, prompting something like "make a cool-looking physically-realistic 2d rocket launch simulator", which we're at point that will most certainly return a functional app.

>but im understanding whats happening

Do you though? You depend on AI correctly translating your natural language input to code. Though arguably this is something LLMs excel at, since math (logic) also plays role you've to be able to at least read and review the resulting code for correctness. (Assuming you actually care about the physical accuracy that is.)