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This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, 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 question of our time, where digital tools permeates 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 renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he wrote, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was often the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith served as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn arrived: reason would supplant superstition, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to offload 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 preference to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a digital method of surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside human capability – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the app over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates answers, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the domain of belief. 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 medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? 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.