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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 suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our era, where technology touches nearly every facet of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that directing force for society was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures claiming to channel God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the social world, from economics to love, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: logic would replace superstition, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned autonomy 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 debuted only in 2022, and already a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – 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 understood by a preference to give up personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we check its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, 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 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy 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 algorithm.