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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger 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 heeded the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that captures a central question of our time, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from economics to matters of the heart, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era emerged: reason would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is merely the start. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent guide that steers our decisions and actions. We risk relinquishing the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey found 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 increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we let it express for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … stay in lifelong immaturity.”

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI presents a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to accomplish things beyond our minds – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the app over my companion (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, 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 may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or manage taxes – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. 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 more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – 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 solely about information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.