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This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that captures a defining question of our time, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of our lives: whom do we trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined 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 guidance from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities claiming to channel God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith served as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. 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 Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.