🔗 Share this article

This past summer, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our time, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith served as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn arrived: logic would replace superstition, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak 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 once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants 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. Maybe most troubling was that over time, 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 … stay in perpetual nonage.”

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. 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 give up autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things beyond our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, certainly the app must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow 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 may become our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. 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. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.