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This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the algorithm'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: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to channel God's voice. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. 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 argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era emerged: reason would supplant superstition, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the engine of progress 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 dictating a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent guide that steers our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Writing is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … remain in lifelong immaturity.”

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a human tendency to give up autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern avenue for surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the app over my friend (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: 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 taxes – duties that are repetitive 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. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both individually 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 lives, and to resist control. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.