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This past summer, 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 suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the algorithm's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that captures a defining question of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust more – other people 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 "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For ages, that directing force for society was often the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith served as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: reason would replace blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app dictating a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

“Laziness and cowardice,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … remain in perpetual nonage.”

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a modern method of surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the app over my companion (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With access to all the data, certainly the app must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy 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.