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

A minor event, maybe. But one that captures a central question of our era, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust more – fellow humans 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 "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith acted as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn arrived: reason would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The late 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, emerging research hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks outside human capability – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With access to all the data, surely the app must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, 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 could be our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about creating a moral community based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.