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This past summer, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our time, where digital tools permeates nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

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 immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from economics to love, faith served as the main compass.

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

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

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study indicated that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we let it express for us. Writing is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a preference to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she took as an insult). With access to all the data, surely the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. 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 powerful tool for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the machine.