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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that captures a central question of our era, where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – figures claiming to speak for divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from economics to love, faith served as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era emerged: logic would supplant superstition, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent guide that influences our choices and actions. We risk relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the top uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … stay in lifelong immaturity.”

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way 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 give up personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to accomplish things outside human capability – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the app over my companion (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed 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 future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both individually 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 destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without undermining 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 must strive not to outsource to the algorithm.