Our King, Our Priest, Our Feudal Lord – The Way AI Returns Us to the Dark Ages.

This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I heeded the app's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our era, where technology permeates nearly every facet of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This state, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is just one example. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that steers our decisions 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 Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a recent study found that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble 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.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … remain in lifelong immaturity.”

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from 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 human tendency to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside human capability – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the app over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With access to all the data, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about building a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.