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 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 renowned spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone commanded us to go forward. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I followed the algorithm's directive. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A minor incident, maybe. But one that captures a defining dilemma of our time, where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives: 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 influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "man's release from its self-inflicted nonage." This immaturity, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to speak for God's voice. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, faith acted as the primary guide.

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

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the boldness to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era arrived: logic would supplant superstition, and the human mind, freed from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a better world.

Today, two and a half centuries later, one might question if we are quietly regressing into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is just one example. AI threatens to become our contemporary authority – a unseen overseer that steers our choices and behaviors. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted only in 2022, and yet a recent study indicated that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on ending a relationship or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for guidance. Data suggests a significant portion of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Composition is now among the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the cognitive activity of participants who had access to AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Perhaps most troubling was that over time, individuals in the AI group became increasingly reliant, copying large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction stems from its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – 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 understood by a preference to give up autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI offers a digital avenue for relinquishing the weight of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things outside human capability – sifting through oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the app over my friend (a choice she took as an affront). With access to real-time information, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I believed.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It generates answers, but not always deepening human comprehension. We do not truly know how AI reaches its conclusions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. 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 may become our 21st-century credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in scientific pursuit. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage administrative chores – work that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it forces us to argue, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own destinies, and to oppose control. It was about creating a ethical society based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than blind belief.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question is this: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without undermining human rationality, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.