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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

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

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for God's voice. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

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

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences 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 computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to 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 among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be understood by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a digital avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With access to real-time information, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – including its creators 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, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.