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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I heeded the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where technology touches nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was often the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to channel God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to love, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: reason 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 wonder if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the hard-won courage to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a preference to give up autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she took as an affront). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces answers, but not always deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp 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 belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our future credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question remains: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.