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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our 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 "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. 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 top uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer 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 showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

“Laziness and cowardice,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … stay in lifelong immaturity.”

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the app over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about creating a ethical society based on the common foundation 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 advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.