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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our era, where technology permeates nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For ages, that directing force for human thought was often the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – figures claiming to channel God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the driver 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 direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences our choices and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Writing is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants 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 lifelong immaturity.”

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With access to all the data, surely the app must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's advice, 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 future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist control. It was about building a moral community based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question remains: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.