[noahjk]

This assumes that the student places the class and knowledge (and writing effort) high in their list of priorities. I'd imagine that the people who are enticed to use an AI solution for writing an essay would have otherwise found writing it way down on their list of desires and would therefore be using many of the tried-and-true tricks to pad out their work.

[acatnamedjoe]

Well sure, if a student doesn't engage meaningfully with the essay and just writes a load of waffle to fill the word count, they won't learn as much and they'll get a bad mark.

In that case sure, the whole exercise is kind of a waste of time, but you could say that about basically any educational method surely? You can take a horse to water and all that...