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

This past summer, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a renowned spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that captures a defining question of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to love, faith served as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your own understanding!”

Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: reason would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen overseer that steers our decisions and behaviors. We risk ceding the hard-won autonomy to think independently – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more striking 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, just behind everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence suggests 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 access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting entire blocks of text.

“Laziness and cowardice,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … stay in perpetual nonage.”

Of course, AI's attraction stems from its efficiency. It is fast, 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 partly explained by a human tendency to surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a modern avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she took as an insult). With access to real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but not always fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even its programmers admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own destinies, and to resist control. It was about building a moral community based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the algorithm.