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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that captures a central question of our era, where technology permeates nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For ages, that directing force for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to channel God's voice. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: reason would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it express for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … remain in lifelong immaturity.”

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a digital avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the app over my friend (a choice she took as an affront). With access to real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It generates answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow 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, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about building a ethical society 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 promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.