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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that captures a central dilemma of our era, where digital tools permeates nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was often the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to speak for divine will. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to love, faith served as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is merely the start. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely 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 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … stay in perpetual nonage.”

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to give up personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a digital method of relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With access to all the data, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but not always deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a moral community based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question is this: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.