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This past summer, 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 fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our time, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to channel divine will. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, faith served as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era emerged: reason would supplant superstition, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is merely the start. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that influences our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study found that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we let it express for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, some evidence hints the answer may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be understood by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. 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 affront). With access to real-time information, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp 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 recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. 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 argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about creating a ethical society based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.