This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.
A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?
The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was often the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith served as the primary guide.
“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”
Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.
Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app dictating a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.
ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a global survey found that an vast number of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?
Alarmingly, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.
“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … remain in perpetual nonage.”
Certainly, AI's attraction 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 rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to give up autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital method of surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.
AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my companion (a decision she took as an affront). With access to all the data, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.
The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces answers, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our future guiding principle.
AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – duties that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.
Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.
With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, 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 must strive not to outsource to the machine.
Elara is a seasoned writer and digital storyteller with a passion for exploring diverse literary genres and empowering others through words.
