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This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our time, where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we 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 once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that directing force for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to channel divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, faith acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the hard-won courage to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Writing is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement 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 accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to offload 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 autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI presents a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things beyond human capability – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers 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 productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually 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 resist control. It was about building a moral community grounded in the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question remains: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.