I think most people in here know at least a few ways they can use AI that is genuinely useful to them. I suppose if you're _very_ positive about AI, then it's good to have a polarized negative article to make us remember all the ways AI is being overpromised. I'm definitely very excited about finding new ways to apply AI, and that explorative phase can come off as trying to sell snake oil. We have to be realistic and acknowledge this is a technology that can produce content faster than we can consume it. Content that takes effort to distinguish useful vs. not.
All that said I disagree with the idea that the only way "to help students break out of their prisons, at least for an hour, so they can see and enhance the beauty of their own minds" is via teaching and not via technologies such as AI. The education system certainly failed me and I found a lot of joy in technology instead. For me it was the start of the internet, but I can only imagine for many today it will be the start of AI.
The only thing that really comes to mind is making something in a domain where I have almost no prior expertise.
But then ChatGPT is so frequently wrong, and so frequently repeatedly wrong when it tries to "correct" problems when pointed out, that even then I always have to go and read relevant documentation and re-write the thing regardless. Maybe there's some slight usefulness here in giving me a starting point, but it's marginal.