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This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where technology permeates nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people 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-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for God's voice. To explain phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our choices and actions. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? 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 mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity 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.

“Laziness and cowardice,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … stay in lifelong immaturity.”

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a modern method of surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things outside our minds – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, 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 app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the domain of belief. 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 formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – work 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 optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – 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 fosters self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about building a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the machine.