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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 friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: 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 renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for God's voice. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the boldness to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace superstition, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app dictating a direction is just one example. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise 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 preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the app over my companion (a decision she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – even its creators admit this. 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 realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the machine.