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

This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our time, where digital tools permeates nearly every facet of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he wrote, "is the inability to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was often the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – entities claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to matters of the heart, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our contemporary authority – a silent overseer that influences our decisions and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and already a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, 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 use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it express for us. Writing is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Worryingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had access to AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest brain activity and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … remain in perpetual nonage.”

Of course, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to give up autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to perform tasks beyond our minds – analyzing vast datasets at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to believe the app over my companion (a choice she took as an insult). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the app must know best – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces answers, but not always fostering human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its programmers admit this. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's advice, 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 may become our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle administrative chores – duties that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a discipline of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to resist control. It was about creating a moral community based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI offers, the key question is this: how can we harness its potential of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock 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 machine.