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This past summer, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our era, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to channel God's voice. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, faith served as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn arrived: reason would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the least brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way 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 human tendency to give up autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents 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 capacity to perform tasks beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With access to all the data, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It generates answers, but not always fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the domain of faith. 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 powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question is this: 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 delegate to the machine.