🔗 Share this article

This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, faith served as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a silent overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on 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 striking than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we let it speak for us. Writing is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated 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?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a modern avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to accomplish things outside human capability – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an affront). With access to real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question is this: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.