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This past summer, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that captures a defining question of our time, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your own understanding!”

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections 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 saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the app over my companion (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

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 tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about efficiency – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.