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

This recent season, I was caught in gridlocked traffic on the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a renowned spot for bouillabaisse. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's directive. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial incident, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where technology touches almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – other people 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-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was often the priest, the king, or the landowner – figures purporting to channel God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith served as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: reason would supplant 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 question if we are slipping back into a form of dependency. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We risk relinquishing the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and now, 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 yet a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we let it speak for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs 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 essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method 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 obedience. AI offers a modern method of surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things outside human capability – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the app over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an affront). With access to real-time information, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our future credo.

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 handle administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his peers did not champion reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the machine.