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This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that captures a central question of our era, where technology permeates nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the landowner – entities claiming to channel divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, 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 always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences our choices and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a global survey indicated that an vast number of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – 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 surrender autonomy in for the sake of the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

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 opted to believe the app over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It generates answers, but not always fostering human understanding. 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 follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to 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 mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about building a moral community grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.