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This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn arrived: logic would supplant superstition, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a silent guide that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we let it speak for us. Writing is now among the top uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … remain in perpetual nonage.”

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. 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 rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With access to real-time information, surely the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. 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 back in the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – duties 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 assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries 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 empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question is this: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.