🔗 Share this article

This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our era, where technology 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 A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to channel God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey indicated that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we let it express for us. Writing is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to 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 troubling was that over time, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

“Laziness and cowardice,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … stay in perpetual nonage.”

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – 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 partly explained by a human tendency to give up autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a modern method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks beyond human capability – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an insult). With knowledge of all the data, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed 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 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle 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 extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces 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 authors of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about building a ethical society grounded in 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 leverage its potential of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.