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 scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the algorithm's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where digital tools permeates almost every aspect of our lives: whom do we trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was frequently the priest, the king, or the landowner – figures claiming to channel God's voice. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better 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 driving route is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that influences our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study indicated that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI showed the least brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the rise of fascism could be understood by a human tendency to give up autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. 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 ability to accomplish things beyond human capability – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of all the data, surely the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates answers, but not always deepening human understanding. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's advice, 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 guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – work that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about efficiency – it was a practice of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question remains: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.