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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 companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to love, faith served as the primary guide.

“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 new dawn arrived: reason would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that influences our choices and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won courage to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a recent study indicated that an vast number of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying large sections 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 lies in its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to offload responsibility. 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 for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern avenue for surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing 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 choice she took as an affront). With access to all the data, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It generates answers, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.