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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that captures a central question of our era, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For ages, that directing force for society was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to love, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant superstition, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a global survey found 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 increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition 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 occurs 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 brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way 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 personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a digital method of surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the app over my friend (a decision she took as an affront). With access to all the data, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. 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, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; 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 remains: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.