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

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that captures a defining question of our time, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

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-inflicted immaturity." This state, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for divine will. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: logic would replace superstition, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a silent guide that steers our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a modern avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It produces answers, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – work 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. Independent thought was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about building a moral community based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question is this: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.