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This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that captures a defining question of our time, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our choices and actions. We risk relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Writing is now among the top uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely 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 yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

“Laziness and cowardice,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … remain in perpetual nonage.”

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a preference to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With access to all the data, surely the app had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against clear, objective criteria. 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 future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about building a moral community based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question remains: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the algorithm.