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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 companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust more – other people 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 "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to speak for divine will. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to matters of the heart, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: reason would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that influences our decisions and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a global survey indicated that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it express for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, participants 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 … stay in lifelong immaturity.”

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a preference to give up autonomy in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern method of surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to accomplish things beyond our minds – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. 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 credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. 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. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, 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 information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.