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

This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I heeded the app's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor event, maybe. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives: who gets our trust more – fellow humans 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 "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from an external source." For ages, 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 religion. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine acted as the main compass.

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

Kant argued that humans had the ability to think rationally. They just didn't have the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: logic would supplant superstition, and the intellect, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of dependency. An app dictating a direction is just one example. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and behaviors. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and already a global survey indicated that an overwhelming majority of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts relate to personal life matters. Even more striking 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, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we cease discovering?

Worryingly, emerging research hints the answer may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the mental engagement of essay writers who had access to AI, Google, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew 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 attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, reduces effort and – critically – offers a new method to abdicate accountability. 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 give up personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a modern method of relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things beyond human capability – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my friend (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the app must know best – or so I thought.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates answers, but not always deepening human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – including its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its logic against transparent standards. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the realm of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our 21st-century credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can aid in inventing drugs, free us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have more leisure. Independent thought was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both individually and as a society. 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 building a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question is this: how can we leverage its potential of advanced capability without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we would do well not to delegate to the algorithm.