🔗 Share this article

This past summer, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our era, where technology touches nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the inability 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 king, or the landowner – figures claiming to channel divine will. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from economics to love, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the boldness to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: logic would supplant superstition, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We risk ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to personal life matters. 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, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints 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 could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … remain in lifelong immaturity.”

Of course, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern method of surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting 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 all the data, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to 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 formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become authors 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 blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.