🔗 Share this article

This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our era, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust more – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise 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 own understanding without guidance from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith served as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a silent guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – 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 already a global survey indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it express for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be partly explained by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things outside human capability – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the app over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.