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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that captures a defining question of our time, where technology touches almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was often the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to channel divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn arrived: reason would replace blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress 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 merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a silent guide that influences our choices and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the least brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to give up personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a modern avenue for surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted 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 opaque system. It produces knowledge, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.