Our King, Our Priest, Our Feudal Lord – How AI Is Taking Us Back to the Medieval Era.

This past summer, I found myself navigating in congested traffic on the sweltering streets of a southern French city. At an intersection, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining question of our time, where digital tools touches almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed nonage." This state, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to channel divine will. To comprehend phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In organizing 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 reason!”

Kant maintained that humans had the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a fresh era emerged: logic would replace superstition, and the human mind, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of advancement and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that influences our decisions and actions. We risk 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 Subtle Dangers of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study indicated that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our reliance on AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Composition is now one of the most common uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What transpires when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used electroencephalography to observe the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's attraction lies in its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – critically – offers a novel way to offload responsibility. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that the rise of fascism could be understood by a preference to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of subordination. AI presents a digital method of surrendering the burden of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Trust Without Understanding

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things beyond our minds – analyzing oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I opted to trust the app over my companion (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With access to real-time information, certainly the app had superior insight – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI operates as a opaque system. It generates answers, but not always deepening human understanding. We do not truly know how AI reaches its decisions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in inventing drugs, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or handle taxes – work that are repetitive and are unfulfilling. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not champion reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about productivity – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and fallible, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It builds confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about acquiring knowledge; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own destinies, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a moral community based on the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the paramount challenge remains: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? 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.