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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 companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures claiming to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from economics to love, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: reason would replace superstition, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption 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 respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the answer may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring 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 quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method 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 preference to give up autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a modern avenue for surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks beyond human capability – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of all the data, surely the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the domain 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 formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question remains: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.