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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our era, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – figures claiming to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to love, faith acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era emerged: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a silent overseer that influences our decisions and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Writing 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 purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had access to AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI showed the least brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, 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 appeal stems from its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a modern avenue for surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With access to all the data, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It generates answers, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – even its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. 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 credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to argue, 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 information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about creating a moral community based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

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