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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For ages, that directing force for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to channel divine will. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that steers our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we let it express for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “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 outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the least brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting 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 lies in its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload accountability. 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 personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a modern method of surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. 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 knowledge of real-time information, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – 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 back in the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. 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 doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about building a ethical society based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question remains: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.