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This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where digital tools permeates nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, faith acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences our choices and actions. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, some evidence hints the answer may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – 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 partly explained by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to accomplish things beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help 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 productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to debate, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about creating a moral community based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question remains: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy 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.