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This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was frequently the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to speak for divine will. To explain phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to love, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn emerged: reason would replace superstition, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that influences our decisions and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the least brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It generates 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 check its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, 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.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the algorithm.