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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 companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our era, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

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-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities purporting to channel God's voice. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: reason would replace blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that influences our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a recent study indicated that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, 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 novel way to abdicate responsibility. 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 give up autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things beyond our minds – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the app over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of all the data, surely the app had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It produces knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, 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 lives, and to oppose control. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.