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

This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of Marseille. At an intersection, my friend in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. However, the navigation app on my phone commanded us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-inflicted immaturity." This immaturity, he wrote, "represents the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from an external source." For centuries, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the landowner – entities claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In organizing the social world, from economics to love, religious doctrine served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to use it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace superstition, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of dependency. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen overseer that steers our choices and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are looking to machines for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for advice is what happens when we let it speak for us. Composition is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of participants who had could use 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 over time, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – 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 human tendency to give up autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a digital avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside our minds – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With knowledge of all the data, surely the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It generates answers, but without necessarily deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our future credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Independent thought was not merely about efficiency – it was a practice of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to acknowledge the boundaries of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies itself? That is likely one of the defining questions of our century. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the algorithm.