🔗 Share this article

This past summer, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that captures a central question of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities claiming to channel God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to love, faith served as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace superstition, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical 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 direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a silent overseer that steers our decisions and actions. We risk relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a preference to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a modern avenue for surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to accomplish things beyond our minds – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a decision she took as an affront). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It produces answers, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist control. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

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