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This recent season, 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 renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our era, where technology permeates almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: logic would replace superstition, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that steers our decisions and actions. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey found that an vast number of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now among the top uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things beyond our minds – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a practice of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding 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 delegate to the machine.