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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that captures a defining 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 algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he argued, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was often the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for God's voice. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace superstition, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a global survey found that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of participants who had access to AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting large sections 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 convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things outside human capability – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It produces answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the algorithm.