🔗 Share this article

This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where technology permeates nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans 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-inflicted immaturity." This state, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was often the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to channel God's voice. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the social world, from economics to love, religious doctrine 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 use it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn arrived: reason would supplant 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 slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a silent guide that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won courage to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the top uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, individuals 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 … remain in perpetual nonage.”

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work 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 give up autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI presents 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 perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the app over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces answers, but not always fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. 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 formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist control. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question is this: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? 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.