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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that captures a central dilemma of our era, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: reason would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that steers our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence 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 prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “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 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the app over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question remains: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.