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 a crossing, my companion in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to go forward. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the algorithm's advice. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central dilemma of our era, where digital tools touches nearly every facet of existence: whom do we trust more – other people 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, "is the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from an external source." For ages, that guiding "other" for human thought was frequently the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to speak for divine will. To comprehend natural events like volcanic eruptions, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served 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 use it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn arrived: logic would supplant blind faith, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is merely the start. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen overseer that steers our decisions and actions. We risk ceding the historically earned courage to think independently – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched only in 2022, and yet a global survey indicated that an vast number of people had engaged with artificial intelligence in the preceding half-year. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for counsel. Data suggests a large majority of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what occurs when we let it express for us. Writing is now among the most common uses for generative AI, just behind everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs 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 track the mental engagement of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or no aids. Those who could use AI displayed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble quoting their own work. Maybe most troubling was that after a few months, individuals in the AI group grew increasingly reliant, pasting large sections 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 efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a new method to abdicate 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 human tendency to surrender personal freedom in exchange for the comforting security of obedience. AI offers a modern method of relinquishing the burden of having to decide for oneself.

The Opacity Dilemma: Trust Without Understanding

AI's primary draw is its ability to accomplish things outside our minds – analyzing oceans of data at lightning pace. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the app over my friend (a choice she interpreted as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the algorithm must know best – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI is a black box. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its conclusions – including its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its logic against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's recommendation, we are not being led by logic. We are back in the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our 21st-century guiding principle.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in rational inquiry. It can help medical research, liberate us from "bullshit jobs", or manage taxes – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for enlightenment just so humans could optimize chores or have more leisure. Independent thought was not merely about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it forces us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters confidence, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the use of reason was never solely about information; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to oppose control. It was about building a moral community based on the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the advantages AI brings, the key question remains: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That may be one of the central dilemmas of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the algorithm.