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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 companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our era, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to speak for divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn emerged: reason would replace superstition, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing 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 autonomy to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we let it speak for us. Writing is now among the top uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, 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 could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With access to real-time information, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but not always deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist control. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question remains: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the machine.