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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 companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that captures a central question of our time, where technology permeates almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To explain phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace superstition, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app dictating a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a silent guide that influences our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Writing 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 stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the lowest brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to give up autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a modern avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she took as an affront). With access to real-time information, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, 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 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 help medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about creating a moral community based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.