When the Scaffold Stays On: AI, Practice Style, and Screening in Elite Skill Formation

Abstract: Generative AI raises short-term productivity by completing tasks that learners would otherwise practice on their own. Whether this substitution erodes frontier skill, the skill behind top-tail non-AI-aided performance, is an open question of rising stakes. The sharper question is whether selection mechanisms can screen apart two coexisting types: substitute-users, who use AI in place of deliberate practice, and complement-users, who use it to accelerate skill development. In elite programming, the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) and the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) prohibit AI under proctoring and admit entrants through qualification rounds, whereas online Codeforces (CF) contests are unproctored and open to all. From CF histories we build an AI-prompt signature (more first-attempt acceptances, fewer attempts and retries) consistent with AI-assisted practice. Three patterns triangulate institutional screening. First, CF practice shifted toward this signature across cohorts over two AI rollouts. Second, in open CF contests a stronger signature predicts smaller rating gains for users with no ICPC/IOI affiliation, but not for those who qualified for the AI-prohibited contests. Third, inside the AI-prohibited ICPC environment, a shift toward AI-style practice predicts higher non-AI-aided scores for AI-era entrants. The same practice input carries opposite signs depending on whether the environment screens for it. The contrast points to two levers: how AI is integrated into training, since within the screened pool AI-style practice coincides with stronger non-AI-aided performance; and the design of AI-prohibited evaluation gates as a type-separating institution. Both extend beyond programming to credentialing systems (medical and legal boards, professional certification) that certify skill in a workforce increasingly shaped by AI.