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This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I heeded the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he argued, "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 monarch, or the landowner – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, faith served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn emerged: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent guide that steers our choices 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 Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a global survey indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, some evidence hints the answer 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, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, 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 lifelong immaturity.”

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things beyond our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the app over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With access to all the data, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about building a moral community grounded in the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.