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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the social world, from economics to love, faith served as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our choices and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned autonomy to think independently – 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 already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … stay in lifelong immaturity.”

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – 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 understood by a preference to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a modern avenue for surrendering 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 beyond human capability – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the app over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of all the data, surely 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 cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – 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 more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about efficiency – it was a practice of liberty 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 builds self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question remains: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability 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 delegate to the machine.