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This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our time, where technology permeates nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities purporting to channel God's voice. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your own understanding!”

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era emerged: logic would supplant superstition, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a silent overseer that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of essay writers who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting large sections 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 argued that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the app over my friend (a decision she took as an insult). With access to all the data, surely the app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the realm of faith. 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 formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. 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 ethical society based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question is this: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.