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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to speak for divine will. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn emerged: reason would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical 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 merely the start. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent guide that influences our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we let it express for us. Writing is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate 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 give up autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond human capability – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, 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 would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.