This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.
A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that captures a central question of our era, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?
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-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For ages, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.
“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your own understanding!”
Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: reason would supplant 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 form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a silent overseer that steers our choices and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.
The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance
ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?
Worryingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.
“Laziness and cowardice,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … stay in lifelong immaturity.”
Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern avenue for surrendering 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. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the app over my friend (a choice she took as an insult). With access to real-time information, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.
The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It generates answers, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.
Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance
AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.
Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist control. It was about building a ethical society based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.
With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.
