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This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: reason would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that steers our choices and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we let it speak for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, some evidence hints the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI showed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With access to all the data, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question remains: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.