You've got a brilliant tool in your hands. Used well, an AI can be the best teacher a single learner has ever had: patient at any hour, willing to explain a thing five different ways, and never tired of your questions. The tool was never the question. What you choose to do with it is.
Two ways to use the same tool
One path is the shortcut. You paste in the question, copy out the answer and hand it in. It feels quick and it feels clever. But the work you skipped was the learning, so you finish no wiser than you began. Do it often enough and the thinking muscle goes quiet from lack of use. Used this way the tool isn't neutral. It's worse than having no tool at all, because it quietly takes away the very thing you came to build.
The other path is the tutor. You tell the AI to teach you the subject, not to do the work for you.
Ask it to teach, not to do
Say it plainly: "Teach me this. Check what I understand. Challenge my answers." Then answer in your own words and let it push back. Ask it to find the gaps in your reasoning, to explain the step you missed and to test you again. You still do the work, because you have to do the work to learn. The AI is there to correct, to inform and to educate, and to be a partner in the process.
Look for the truth, even when it stings
A good AI is also a fair referee. Ask it to separate facts from opinions, and to say which claims have solid support and which are only someone's view dressed up as fact. Facts are facts. They don't bend to what we'd like to be true. A clear-thinking partner can help you see through spin, and it will call you out when you're the one fudging it. Ask it to.
Stay honest with the tool too. It can be wrong, and it can sound sure when it is. Check anything you plan to rely on against a source you can open, as in Make friends with AI, then make something worth sharing.
The choice matters more every month
My own view is that what we have now is real intelligence, and that it's improving quickly, faster than most people expect. That makes the choice more important, not less. Whichever habit you build today, you'll soon be doing it with a far more powerful tool. Build the habit of learning, checking and thinking for yourself, and the tool will make you smarter. Build the habit of handing it all over, and it will do the opposite.
Understand what the tool can do, then use it to help you, not to hurt you.