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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our era, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for society was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from economics to love, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era emerged: reason would replace superstition, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent guide that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won courage 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 recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Data suggests a large majority 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 tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, copying large sections 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 efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to offload accountability. 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 comforting security of subordination. AI presents a modern method of surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces answers, but not always fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. 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.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – work that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both personally and as a society. 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 building a moral community based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question is this: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.