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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our time, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

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 nonage." This state, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to channel divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, faith served as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn arrived: logic would replace superstition, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its efficiency. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate responsibility. 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 give up autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things outside human capability – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the machine over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and as a society. 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 oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the algorithm.