Our King, Our Priest, Our Feudal Lord – How AI Is Taking Us Back to the Dark Ages.

This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that captures a defining question of our time, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust to a greater degree – other people and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to channel God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the fabric of society, from economics to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: reason would replace blind faith, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, 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 merely the start. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We risk ceding the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Research suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, some evidence suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that over time, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. 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 personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a digital method of surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to perform tasks outside our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to trust the app over my companion (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It generates answers, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – even its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we follow 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 Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool 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 are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist domination. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.