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

This past summer, I was caught in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the front seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for fish soup. However, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Weary and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our era, where technology touches nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust more – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was frequently the priest, the king, or the landowner – figures purporting to speak for God's voice. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from economics to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

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

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the boldness to employ it. With revolutions in America and France, a fresh era emerged: reason would supplant superstition, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, two and a half centuries later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a unseen guide that influences our choices and actions. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Swift Adoption and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to machines for counsel. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for advice is what occurs when we allow it speak for us. Composition is now among the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “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 affirmative. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to track the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI displayed the least brain activity and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group became increasingly reliant, copying entire blocks of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It saves time, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to offload accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to give up autonomy in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI offers a digital avenue for surrendering the weight of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its capacity to perform tasks outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the machine over my companion (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, certainly the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It produces answers, but without necessarily fostering human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are back in the realm of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, free us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about efficiency – it was a practice of freedom and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both individually and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question remains: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That is likely one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we would do well not to outsource to the machine.