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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I heeded the app's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where technology permeates almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to offload responsibility. 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 surrender autonomy in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It produces answers, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question remains: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.