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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app 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 construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that captures a central dilemma of our time, where technology permeates nearly every facet of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the landowner – figures purporting to speak for God's voice. To explain phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, faith served as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: reason would replace superstition, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that influences our choices and behaviors. We risk ceding the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely 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 affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI showed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a modern method of surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the app over my friend (a choice she took as an affront). With access to all the data, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. 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 returning to the realm 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 humanity in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist control. 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 potential of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.