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This past summer, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

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

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for society was often the priest, the king, or the landowner – figures claiming to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, faith served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that influences our choices and actions. We risk ceding the hard-won courage to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling 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 many of men … remain in perpetual nonage.”

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be understood by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she took as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. 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, trust the machine – that could be our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about building a ethical society based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question remains: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.