🔗 Share this article

This past summer, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the machine?

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 wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For ages, that directing force for society was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the social world, from economics to love, faith served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era emerged: reason would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our choices and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study found that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user queries concern 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 most common uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things beyond human capability – sifting through oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my companion (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With access to all the data, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates knowledge, but not always fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about building a ethical society based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.