🔗 Share this article

This past summer, 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. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our era, where technology permeates nearly every facet of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he wrote, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the landowner – figures claiming to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, faith acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to use it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: reason would replace blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app dictating a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now among the most common 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 occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the answer may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, 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 … stay in perpetual nonage.”

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital method of surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my companion (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of all the data, certainly the app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It produces answers, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with 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 rational inquiry. It can help medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters 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 oppose control. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.