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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our time, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was often the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities claiming to channel divine will. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from economics to matters of the heart, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

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

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines 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. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, 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 lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – 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 give up autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things beyond human capability – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my companion (a decision she took as an affront). With access to all the data, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. 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, side with the machine – that may become our future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a practice of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. 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 authors of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about building a moral community based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question is this: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.