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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was often the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to channel divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, faith acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would replace blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that influences our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a global survey found that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we let it express for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, individuals 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 … stay in lifelong immaturity.”

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a modern avenue for surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things outside our minds – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the app over my friend (a decision she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question is this: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.