🔗 Share this article

This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where technology permeates almost every aspect of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For ages, that directing force for human thought was often the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – figures claiming to channel God's voice. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to matters of the heart, faith served as the main compass.

“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 use it. With revolutions in America and France, a new dawn arrived: reason would supplant superstition, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We risk relinquishing the hard-won courage to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted 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 contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we let it speak for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study from 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 rely on AI displayed the least brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to abdicate 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 preference to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks beyond human capability – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the app over my companion (a decision she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic 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 belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

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