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This past summer, I was caught 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 fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our time, where technology permeates nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to channel divine will. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: reason would supplant superstition, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that steers our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won courage to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a recent study found that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we allow it express for us. Composition is now among the top uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the least brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things outside human capability – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With access to all the data, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. 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, side with the machine – that may become our future credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought 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 argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about building a ethical society based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.