Those people had no choice. In my opinion, it’s harder to grind through problems knowing very well an answer is a prompt away.

But getting an answer is not the same thing as understanding why that is the correct answer, or going deeper and learning more about the subject.

IMHO, the people who genuinely desire to learn will trudge through whatever they need to in order to grow their understanding - be it through reading books, original research papers or what have you.

If, OTOH, all you seek is the answers and that alone is satisfying to you, then of course you simply will not be motivated to do it the old school way anyway. But that's hardly different now in the age of AI.