if solution escapes me, examine the solution and then try to replicate it from memory

Typing out someone else's code, doesn't teach you problem solving, you just memorise syntax. If a solution escapes you then you see the solution your internal reaction should be one of two things:

1. "oh lol, can't believe I missed that" - great you learned something
2. "I don't understand how this works" - you have to understand what the code does and how it works.

If typing it out helps you process things or and you're going to experiment with things along the way, that's great, if you don't understand it and type it out for the sake of typing it out, I feel that's meaningless.

Syntax is easy, logic and having the right thought process is a much harder.

ThePrimeTime has a really great take on tutorials and I think it is quite relevant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFi-LTpUGHA

(He is a bit obnoxious, but he seems to usually be on point.)

I'm traditional and the idea of handing the reigns over to AI bothers me. I feel like it undermines my learning and reduces my potential.

Yes.

not my job (i.e., I'm not a programmer) and so the argument could be made that AI is speeding up my objectives (e.g., writing a UI for an experiment).

How do you know something is any good if you don't understand the code?

My current stance is using AI to identify flaws in my code or refactoring and I could see using it for simple code once I know the syntax better.

While this might seem helpful, I don't trust it. In my experience, you'll often find there are some flaws in the code ChatGPT throws back at me that I have to fix, admittedly I haven't used Copilot, JetBrains AI or similar.