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This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where digital tools permeates nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was often the priest, the king, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that steers our choices 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 lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, some evidence 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, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to abdicate 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 surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the app over my companion (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, certainly the app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – even its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our future credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion 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 liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

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 free societies itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.