Our King, Our Priest, Our Feudal Lord – The Way AI Returns Us to the Medieval Era.

This recent season, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat advised 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 stuck at a construction site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our time, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to channel God's voice. To explain natural events like volcanic eruptions, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to love, faith acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era arrived: logic would replace superstition, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a better world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a silent overseer that steers our decisions and behaviors. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a recent study indicated that an vast number of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Data suggests a large majority of user queries concern personal life matters. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Writing is now among 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 suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest brain activity and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal stems from its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – importantly – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a human tendency to give up personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a digital method of surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside our minds – sifting through vast datasets at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the app over my companion (a decision she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – including 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 guided by reason. We are back in the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that could be our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can aid in 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 contemporaries did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to question, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both individually and as a society. 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 creating a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its promise of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.