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This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I heeded the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that captures a central question of our time, where technology permeates nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your own understanding!”

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned courage 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 only in 2022, and yet a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Writing is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI showed the least brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern method of relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow 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, side with the machine – that may become our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to doubt, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist control. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, 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 rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.