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This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described 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 guidance from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for divine will. To explain phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: reason would replace superstition, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of 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 AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Writing is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, some evidence hints the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the least brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, individuals 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 attraction stems from its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a digital method of relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the app over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It produces knowledge, but not always deepening human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about efficiency – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic 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 personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies 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.