🔗 Share this article

This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he argued, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities claiming to speak for divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, faith acted as the main compass.

“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 confidence to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era emerged: reason would supplant superstition, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that steers our choices and actions. We risk relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to give up autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the app over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our future credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries 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 discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.