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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that captures a central dilemma of our time, where digital tools touches 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 Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was often the priest, the king, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era emerged: reason would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent guide that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of 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 Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority 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 machines for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Writing is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way 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 comforting security of subordination. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It produces answers, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom 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 recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both individually 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 destinies, and to resist domination. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.