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

This past summer, I was caught in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the algorithm's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where technology permeates nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust more – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For ages, that directing force for society was often the priest, the king, or the landowner – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from commerce to love, religious doctrine acted 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 boldness to use it. With revolutions in the 18th century, a new dawn arrived: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen guide that steers our choices and actions. We risk ceding the hard-won autonomy to reason for ourselves – and now, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Writing is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, some evidence hints the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI showed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, 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 perpetual nonage.”

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – 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 autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital 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 outside our minds – sifting through oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the app over my friend (a decision she interpreted as an insult). With access to real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. 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, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both individually and as a society. 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 oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question is this: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the machine.