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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I followed the algorithm's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that captures a defining question of our time, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to channel God's voice. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith acted as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that influences our decisions and actions. We risk relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate 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 comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern avenue for surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to accomplish things outside our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of all the data, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, 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 could be our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a practice of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.