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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that captures a central dilemma of our era, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant argued 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 fresh era arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, freed from authority, 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 dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen overseer that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a global survey found that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely 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 observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a digital 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 accomplish things outside human capability – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the app over my friend (a decision she took as an insult). With access to real-time information, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. 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 resist domination. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question is this: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.