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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching 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. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that captures a central dilemma of our time, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for society was frequently the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, faith acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your own understanding!”

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that influences our choices and actions. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won courage to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. 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 personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital method of surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to accomplish things outside human capability – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the app over my companion (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of all the data, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but not always fostering human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about creating 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 remains: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy 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 algorithm.