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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that captures a central question of our era, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans 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 wrote, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith acted as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey found that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it express for us. Writing is now among the most common uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of obedience. AI presents a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond human capability – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of belief. 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 scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about building a ethical society based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.