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This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the algorithm's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our era, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For ages, that directing force for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for God's voice. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would supplant superstition, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is just one example. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a preference to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates answers, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in 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 humanity in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question is this: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.