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This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our era, where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: logic would replace superstition, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of advancement and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of 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 Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, 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 over time, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

“Laziness and cowardice,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … stay in perpetual nonage.”

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – 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 exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It generates answers, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – work that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion 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 emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.