🔗 Share this article

This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that steers our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The celebrated 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, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

“Laziness and cowardice,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … remain in perpetual nonage.”

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to give up autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern method of surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm 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 powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a ethical society based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question remains: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.