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This past summer, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that captures a defining question of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

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-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn arrived: reason would replace superstition, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it express for us. Writing is now among the top uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be yes. A study from 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 rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way to abdicate responsibility. 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 give up autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a digital method of surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks beyond human capability – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a decision she took as an insult). With access to real-time information, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces answers, but not always deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our future credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a ethical society based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the machine.