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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For ages, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to speak for God's voice. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey found that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we allow it express for us. Writing is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern avenue for surrendering the weight 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. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the app over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With access to all the data, surely the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but not always deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. 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.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.