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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our time, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

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-inflicted immaturity." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For ages, that directing force for society was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for God's voice. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith served as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the boldness to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant superstition, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of advancement 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 steers our choices and actions. We risk ceding the hard-won courage to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we allow it express for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the least brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to abdicate accountability. 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 exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital method of surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It produces answers, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a discipline 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 acknowledge the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question is this: 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 central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the machine.