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This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that captures a central question of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust more – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "represents the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, faith acted as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would replace superstition, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent guide that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the least brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way to offload 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 preference to give up autonomy in for the sake of the comforting security of obedience. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks beyond human capability – sifting through oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It produces knowledge, but not always deepening human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about building a moral community grounded in the common foundation 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 bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.