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This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our era, where technology permeates nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era emerged: logic would supplant superstition, and the intellect, liberated 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 suggesting a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won courage 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 only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we let it speak for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, 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 lifelong immaturity.”

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to offload responsibility. 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 autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates answers, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist control. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question is this: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.