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This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where technology touches almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn arrived: reason would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is merely the start. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, 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.”

Of course, 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 argued that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a preference to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things beyond our minds – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the app over my companion (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of all the data, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates answers, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow 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 may become our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. 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 productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question remains: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without undermining 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.