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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the algorithm's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that captures a defining question of our era, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For ages, that directing force for society was often the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from economics to love, faith 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 simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: reason would replace superstition, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our choices and actions. We are in danger of ceding 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 debuted only in 2022, and yet a recent study found that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern method of surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things outside human capability – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.