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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, 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 go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – entities claiming to channel divine will. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: reason would replace blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way to offload 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 human tendency to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the app over my companion (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", 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. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only 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 shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies 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 machine.