Our New Sovereign, Our Digital Priest, Our Algorithmic Overlord – The Way AI Returns Us to the Dark Ages.

This past summer, 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 famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our time, where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

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-imposed nonage." This state, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel God's voice. To explain phenomena like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a fresh era emerged: reason would replace blind faith, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a better world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that influences our choices and actions. We risk relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a recent study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. 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 appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a preference to give up personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a modern avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With access to real-time information, certainly the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI is a opaque system. It generates knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about building a moral community grounded in the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.