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This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At an intersection, 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 continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that captures a defining question of our time, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our 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 famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to channel divine will. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to love, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent guide that steers our choices and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a preference to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern method of 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 outside human capability – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an affront). With access to all the data, certainly the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, 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 optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a moral community based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the machine.