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This past summer, I was caught in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that captures a defining question of our era, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." 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 human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – figures purporting to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: logic would supplant superstition, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, 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. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a silent overseer that influences our choices and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an vast number of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With access to all the data, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our future credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment 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 often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about building a moral community based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.