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This past summer, I was caught in congested traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, 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 continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our time, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To explain phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from economics to love, faith served as the main compass.

“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 the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: reason would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen overseer that steers our decisions and behaviors. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a recent study found that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we let it express for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With access to real-time information, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed 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, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries 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 discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to debate, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.