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This recent season, I was caught 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 bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the algorithm's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect 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 once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures purporting to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, faith served as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era emerged: reason would replace superstition, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that steers our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned courage to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise 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 used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Writing is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed 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.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a modern method of surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside human capability – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my friend (a decision she took as an affront). With access to real-time information, surely the app must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – even 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 returning to the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. 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. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.