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

This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a construction site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our time, where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

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-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for society was frequently the priest, the monarch, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to love, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the top 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 stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a preference to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a digital method of relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It produces knowledge, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust 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 "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about building a moral community based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its potential 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 time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.