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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the algorithm's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our time, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was often the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for God's voice. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to use it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era emerged: reason would supplant superstition, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent guide that influences our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we let it speak for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late 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?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to surrender autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a digital method of surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks outside human capability – sifting through oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With access to real-time information, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It generates answers, but not always deepening human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify 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 belief. 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 rational inquiry. It can help medical research, free us from tedious tasks, 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 merely about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize 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 information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.