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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures claiming to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a silent overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it express for us. Writing 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, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI presents a modern avenue for surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things outside our minds – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With access to all the data, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It generates answers, but not always deepening human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. 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 merely about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose 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 brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.