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This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat suggested 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 advice. 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 digital tools touches nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust more – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the landowner – entities claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from economics to matters of the heart, faith acted as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that influences 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 computer programs.

The Rapid Rise 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 ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now among the top uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, 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 … remain in lifelong immaturity.”

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate 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 autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern method of surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the app must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It produces answers, but not always deepening human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – even its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with 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 aid in medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – work that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.