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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: reason would supplant superstition, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that influences our choices and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, 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 ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we let it speak for us. Writing is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method 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 surrender personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern avenue for surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With access to all the data, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we check its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – work that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.