🔗 Share this article

This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our time, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, 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-imposed nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the social world, from economics 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 ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant superstition, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a silent overseer that influences our choices and actions. We risk ceding the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence 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 queries concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study from 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 displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way 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 personal freedom in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but not always fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, 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 may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question is this: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? 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.