Our King, Our Priest, Our Feudal Lord – 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 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 in a stifling car, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a central question of our era, where digital tools permeates nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was often the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – figures purporting to speak for divine will. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era emerged: logic would replace superstition, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI risks becoming our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that influences our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the hard-won courage to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an vast number of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for guidance. Research 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 let it express for us. Composition is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe 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 accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most troubling was that over time, participants in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting 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 convenience. It is fast, 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 surrender personal freedom in for the sake of the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks outside human capability – sifting through oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I opted to believe the machine over my companion (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With access to all the data, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our future guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for humanity in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It fosters self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about building a ethical society based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question remains: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without eroding human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our century. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the machine.