Be young in your mind. Be young.
How are young people interpreting this?
"Oh wow, I can get it to write or help edit essays"
"I can use it as something to bounce ideas off of"
"I can use it to take ideas from my head into the digital realm."
Stop being old people.
i love how you point out "write or help edit essays" and cant see how that could have potentially negative effects on society. If someone can generate an essay for class in 2 minutes that's better than their writing produced in hours, why would they ever bother to improve their writing?
So why do you need to "be first"?
How about "if X did it, I can too." Which way would you prefer to live?
What do you mean by "being old" here? What is it, concretely, that you want people to stop doing?
So, replace "old" with "inflexible" and you get the gist.
In general, "old" people are inflexible, but we professionals are lucky that we don't have to be in a field that is always expanding.