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

This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our time, where digital tools permeates nearly every facet of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to channel God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics 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 capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to use it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app dictating a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We risk ceding the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the top uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. 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, some evidence hints the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, individuals 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.”

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It is fast, 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 partly explained by a preference to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern method of surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the app over my friend (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we check its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow 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 could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. It builds confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about creating a ethical society based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.