🔗 Share this article

This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he wrote, "represents the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn arrived: reason would supplant superstition, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a silent guide that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it express for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the answer may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

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

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way 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 for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the app must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about information; 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 common foundation of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question is this: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the machine.