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This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our time, where technology permeates almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities claiming to channel divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: reason would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder 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 overseer that influences our decisions and actions. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – 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 human tendency to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a digital avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It generates answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage 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 assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about building a moral community grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies 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.