Our King, Our Priest, Our Feudal Lord – 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 fish soup. However, the navigation app on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Weary and in a stifling car, I followed the app's advice. Moments later, we were stranded at a roadwork site.

A minor event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a central question of our time, where technology touches almost every aspect of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – other people and our own intuition, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and Our Modern Relapse

The renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously described the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "is the incapacity to use one's personal reason without direction from another." For centuries, that directing force for society was frequently the clergyman, the monarch, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to channel God's voice. To explain natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in theology. In shaping the fabric of society, from economics to matters of the heart, faith served as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans always possessed the capacity for reason. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a fresh era emerged: reason would supplant superstition, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the engine of progress and a more ethical world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a driving route is just one example. AI risks becoming our new "other" – a silent overseer that influences our choices and behaviors. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to computer programs.

The Swift Adoption and Hidden Risks of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT debuted a mere three years ago, and yet a recent study indicated that an vast number of people had used AI in the previous six months. Whether deciding on a breakup or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to machines for guidance. Research suggests a large majority of user queries concern non-work topics. Even more striking than our use of AI for judgment is what happens when we let it express for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, second only to everyday tasks. The celebrated American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, emerging research hints the outcome may be yes. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of essay writers who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had difficulty accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group became progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

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

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its convenience. It is fast, minimizes work and – importantly – 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 autonomy 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: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its ability to accomplish things beyond human capability – sifting through oceans of data at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, after all, why I chose to believe the machine over my companion (a choice she took as an affront). With knowledge of all the data, surely the app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a opaque system. It generates answers, but not always deepening human understanding. We cannot fully grasp how AI reaches its conclusions – even its creators admit this. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of belief. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that may become our future credo.

Using Without Losing: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for mankind in rational inquiry. It can help inventing drugs, liberate us from tedious tasks, or manage administrative chores – duties that are repetitive and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could assemble better furniture or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about efficiency – it was a discipline of liberty and human self-determination.

Human thought is often chaotic and error-prone, but it compels us to argue, to doubt, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the limits of our own understanding. It fosters confidence, both personally and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about empowering people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about creating a moral community grounded in the shared principle of rational discourse, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI brings, the key question is this: how can we harness its promise of advanced capability without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock 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 delegate to the machine.