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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 companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, faith served 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 boldness to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era emerged: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a silent guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We risk ceding the historically earned 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 was launched a mere three years ago, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the least brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way 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 preference to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a digital avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an affront). With access to real-time information, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It generates answers, but not always deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question remains: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.