I think there's some truth to this, however, I remember hearing similar arguments when people where using calculators on things they were suppose to be working out by hand.

I bet if you had one of these students explain the rationale behind a strategy they put together for winning at TFT, he or she would likely give you a very well thought out, coherent, and smart line of thinking.

If I had to guess, I would bet that it has far less to do with people being "unwilling to think" and far more of kids becoming exhausted by the boring, learn by memorization, pad your writing to fill space, monotony of an old and outdated education system, divorced from anything at all resembling the real world.

Speaking from experience, I did horrible in school and 100% would've been using ChatGPT whenever I could just to get through it.

The second I got out of school and found out work is far more result/merit based, I "learned" really, really quickly.

The old Mark Twain classic: “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

Every generation thinks the new generation is getting soft, but there is a critical difference this time. Things like calculators replaced the mechanics of multiplication and long division. You still had to know what to multiply and divide, however. In contrast, AI is replacing high level thinking. Now, you just copy questions wholesale into your favorite LLM and copy the answers back. That’s different and a lot more troubling, IMO.