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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our era, where digital tools permeates nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to channel divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your own understanding!”

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

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 deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on 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 everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It is fast, 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 appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the app over my friend (a choice she took as an insult). With access to all the data, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but not always fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – including 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 guided by reason. We are returning to the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.