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This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that captures a central question of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities claiming to speak for divine will. To explain phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, faith served as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant superstition, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a recent study indicated that an vast number of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we let it speak for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. 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, some evidence hints the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. 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 understood by a human tendency to give up autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a decision she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It generates answers, but not always fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not champion 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 liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise 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 based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question remains: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.