Went looking for that old ‘kids today don’t memorize’ quote and found an old argument against writing:

[…] They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. […]

One thing we’re not doing as effectively today as we’ve done in the past is to learn lessons by heart. If you don’t know things with perfect recall, how can you expect to apply them?

Socrates goes on to compare a written text to a painting:

You know, Phaedrus, that is the strange thing about writing, which makes it truly correspond to painting. The painter’s products stand before us as though they were alive. But if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the same with written words. They seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say from a desire to be instructed they go on telling just the same thing forever.

That last bit especially, “if you ask them anything… they go on telling just the same thing forever.” This all sounds exactly like how we’re talking about genies today, and… we’re probably going to be fine.