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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, 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 algorithm's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

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

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was often the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, faith acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: logic would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that influences our choices and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated 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 algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – 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 give up personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic 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 belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – work 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 more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about building a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

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