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This past summer, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our era, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities claiming to channel God's voice. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a silent overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We risk ceding the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a recent study found that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, copying 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, 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 appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things outside human capability – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the app over my friend (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, surely the app had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against clear, objective criteria. 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 guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help 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 assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question is this: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone 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 algorithm.