🔗 Share this article

This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that captures a central dilemma of our time, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he argued, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend phenomena 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 primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is merely the start. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the least brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things beyond our minds – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the app over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – even its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed 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 could be our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. 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 merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose control. 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 key question remains: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the machine.