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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that captures a central question of our era, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This state, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to love, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace superstition, and the intellect, freed from authority, 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 driving route is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We risk ceding the hard-won courage to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study found that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate 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 surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but not always fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. 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, trust the machine – that may become our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, 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 undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone 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.