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This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that captures a defining question of our time, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine 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 boldness to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a silent overseer that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, some evidence hints the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had access to AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI showed the least brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a modern avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things beyond human capability – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question remains: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.