Absolutely we should use all the tools at our disposal which enhances productivity. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also learn how’re to do things for ourselves too.
I made the general tech-dependence statement, but it sounds like you think it is only AI tech that shouldnt' depend on. I wouldn't worry about it; humanity has proven itself to be INCREDIBLY resilient and adaptable when the things we've come to depend on go away or change materially.
Like I said, I have zero issue being “AI first”. 90% of my day-to-day is using AI. But the part I objected to in the OP was “we don’t need to know things because we have AI” (to paraphrase. So I was asking the question: what if AI goes away?
I agree humans are resilient. But that’a not a good excuse for complacency.
If you did, then I apologise. But my point is accessing that knowledge when AI isn’t available. Not about how AI discovered its corpus to begin with.