Tests were created to save money, more students per teacher, we're just going back to the older, actually useful, method of talking to people to see if they understand what they've been taught.
You weren't asked to write an essay because someone wanted to read your essay, only to intuit that you've understood something
Personally I don't believe that any of the problems caused by AI are going to be solved by "more AI"
People do learn how to use the web, social media, mobile devices to ultimately work for them or against them.
How is this working out in practice? Every piece of technology is absolutely adversarial nowadays and people are getting ground to bits by it.
I'm skeptical. Tests are a way of standardizing the curriculum and objectively determining if the lessons were learned.
The lesson of how to swim sometimes only comes in applying the learning.
Some tests require memorized knowledge, like what is the stall speed of your airplane. Some tests require reasoning skills, like what is the stress in this beam.
There are learning frameworks that explain it all well enough.
Learning what something is, vs applying what you learned has different terminology in the learning world, but not everyone might use that.