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This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I followed the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

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

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For ages, that directing force for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel God's voice. To explain phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would supplant superstition, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen overseer that steers our choices and actions. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

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 a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting 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 lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern avenue for surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things outside our minds – sifting through oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she took as an insult). With access to all the data, certainly the app must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture 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 inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both individually and as a society. 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 oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.