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This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our time, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust more – other people and our own intuition, 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-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was often the priest, the king, or the landowner – figures claiming to channel divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: reason would replace superstition, and the intellect, liberated 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 slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that influences our choices and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling 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 great a proportion of men … remain in perpetual nonage.”

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way to abdicate responsibility. 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 surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks outside our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates answers, 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 reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain 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 humanity in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", 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 more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about building a moral community based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.