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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 suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our era, where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

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 nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For ages, that directing force for society was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine 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 upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a silent guide that influences our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a global survey indicated that an vast number of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now among the top uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the least brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the app over my friend (a decision she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we check 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 future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle 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 assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about efficiency – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both personally 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 lives, and to resist control. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question is this: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.