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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where technology permeates nearly every facet of our lives: whom do we trust more – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: reason would replace blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that influences our decisions and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, individuals 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 stems from its convenience. 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 rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to give up autonomy in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern method of surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things beyond human capability – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a choice she took as an affront). With access to all the data, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It generates answers, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. 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, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist control. It was about building a moral community based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.