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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where digital tools permeates nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era emerged: logic would replace superstition, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the hard-won courage to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it express for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way 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 preference to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, 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 themselves? 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.