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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that captures a central question of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – figures purporting to speak for God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from economics to matters of the heart, faith acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would supplant superstition, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a silent overseer that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk ceding the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

“Laziness and cowardice,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … remain in perpetual nonage.”

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to accomplish things outside human capability – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With access to all the data, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but not always fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about building a moral community grounded in the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.