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This past summer, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn emerged: reason would replace superstition, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a silent guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a global survey indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate accountability. 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 give up autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a modern avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the app over my companion (a choice she took as an affront). With access to real-time information, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – work that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. 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 productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.