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This past summer, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I followed the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our time, where technology touches almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – figures purporting to speak for divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: reason would replace superstition, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen overseer that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a recent study found that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we allow it express for us. Writing is now among the top uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the least brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – 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 partly explained by a preference to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a digital avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things beyond our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but not always fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – work that are repetitive 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. Independent thought 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 challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, 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 must strive not to delegate to the machine.