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This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked 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 famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that captures a defining question of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for society was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel God's voice. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from economics to love, faith served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that steers our decisions and actions. We risk relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method to offload accountability. 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 give up personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI presents a digital method of surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – even its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, 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 control. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.