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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 front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for divine will. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace superstition, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover 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 conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, individuals 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 … stay in lifelong immaturity.”

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a new method 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 human tendency to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a modern 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 vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the app over my friend (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the app must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. 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 returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – 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. Independent thought was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty 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 individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question remains: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock 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 algorithm.