"What would you do instead?" An Idea for a Reflective Assignment

I have been thinking about how to get students to understand the impact of generative AI on their personal development. Yesterday, as part of a wide-ranging conversation about teaching with a trusted friend, I came up with an assignment format that might be useful.

The idea is to present the students with an assignment that is appropriate for the topic of the class, but they would not be asked to do that assignment. Instead, they would be asked to consider the obvious temptation to simply put that assignment text into ChatGPT and turn in what it spits out. The real assignment then is this: what would you do with the time you would have otherwise worked on the assignment?

The learning objective for this assignment is to reveal to students what they value and challenge them to consider whether that reflects their personal goals.