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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 fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

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-imposed nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was often the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to speak for divine will. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith acted as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: logic would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that steers our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Composition is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the answer may be affirmative. 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 nothing. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to give up autonomy in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern method of relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the app over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question remains: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.