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This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that captures a defining question of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For ages, that directing force for society was frequently the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to channel God's voice. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

“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 confidence to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: reason would supplant superstition, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a silent guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a global survey found that an vast number of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research 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 could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, 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 … stay in lifelong immaturity.”

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload accountability. 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 surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my companion (a choice she took as an insult). With access to all the data, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a practice of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about building a ethical society based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.