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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our era, where technology permeates almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he wrote, "represents the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to channel divine will. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, faith acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it express for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer 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, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a digital method of relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond human capability – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist control. It was about building a ethical society based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.