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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our era, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for society was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – entities claiming to channel God's voice. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent guide that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it express for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting large sections 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 is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a preference to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the app had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. 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 realm 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 scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – duties 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 assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist control. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.