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This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we 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-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to speak for divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, faith 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 just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a silent guide that steers our choices and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, 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 yet a recent study indicated that an vast number of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity 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 concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … stay in perpetual nonage.”

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to offload 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 autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. 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 returning to 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 humanity in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about building a moral community based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the algorithm.