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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 front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that captures a central dilemma of our era, where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

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 immaturity." This state, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities claiming to channel God's voice. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from economics to love, faith served as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. 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 hard-won 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 debuted a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least brain activity 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.

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

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate accountability. 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 give up personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things outside human capability – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – even its creators 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 could be our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. 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 question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist domination. 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 brings, the key question remains: 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 central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.