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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For ages, that directing force for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to love, faith served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era emerged: reason would replace superstition, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that steers our decisions and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the hard-won courage to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we let it express for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

“Laziness and cowardice,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … stay in perpetual nonage.”

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a modern method of surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond human capability – sifting through oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my friend (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of all the data, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – 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 self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question is this: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the algorithm.