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This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that captures a central dilemma of our era, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics 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 boldness to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that steers our choices and actions. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Writing is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? 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 track the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It saves time, 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 partly explained by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a digital avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the machine over my companion (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem 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 creators admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. 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, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – work that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to debate, to doubt, 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 acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.