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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our era, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to channel God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era emerged: logic would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of advancement and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that steers our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we allow it express for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the least brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … stay in perpetual nonage.”

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the app over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With access to all the data, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces answers, but not always fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a practice of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question remains: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.