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

This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the algorithm's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our era, where technology touches almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To explain phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. 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 maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: reason would supplant superstition, and the intellect, freed from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent guide that influences our choices and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and now, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. 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 rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things beyond our minds – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my companion (a decision she took as an affront). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a black box. It generates answers, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, free us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question is this: 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 century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.