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This past summer, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, faith served 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 revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen guide that steers our choices and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to non-work topics. 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 tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of essay writers who had access to AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in 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 rise of fascism could be partly explained by a preference to give up autonomy in for the sake of the comforting security of obedience. AI presents a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. 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.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about enabling people to become agents 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 blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.