Our New Sovereign, Our Digital Priest, Our Algorithmic Overlord – How AI Is Taking Us Back to the Dark Ages.

This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a construction site.

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

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For ages, that directing force for society was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel God's voice. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from commerce to love, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to use it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era emerged: logic would supplant superstition, and the human mind, liberated from authority, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is just one example. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our choices and actions. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we let it speak for us. Writing is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to give up personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a digital method of relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond human capability – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its conclusions – even its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – duties 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 efficiency – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters 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 destinies, and to resist domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question is this: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without eroding human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.