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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our era, where digital tools permeates nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "represents the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to love, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: logic would supplant superstition, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – 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 indicated that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Writing is now one of 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 transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a preference to give up autonomy in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the app over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With access to all the data, surely the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we check its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline 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 limits of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, 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 oppose domination. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question remains: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone 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 delegate to the algorithm.