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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

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

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release 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 human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the social world, from economics to love, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn arrived: reason would supplant superstition, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs 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 electroencephalography to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate 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 human tendency to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – 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 solely about information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a moral community based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.