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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction 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 to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was often the priest, the king, or the landowner – figures claiming to channel God's voice. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn arrived: reason would supplant superstition, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, 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 efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to offload 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 autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It generates answers, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even 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 domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, 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 lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a moral community based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness 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 time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the algorithm.