This summer, I found myself battling through traffic in the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat told me to turn right toward a spot known for its fish soup. But the navigation app Waze instructed us to go straight. Tired, and with the Renault feeling like a sauna on wheels, I followed Waze\u2019s advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.<\/p>\n
A trivial moment, maybe. But one that captures perhaps the defining question of our era, in which technology touches nearly every aspect of our lives: who do we trust more \u2013 other human beings and our own instincts, or the machine?<\/p>\n
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously defined the Enlightenment<\/a> as \u201cman\u2019s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.\u201d Immaturity, he wrote, \u201cis the inability to use one\u2019s understanding without guidance from another\u201d. For centuries, that \u201cother\u201d directing human thought and life was often the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord \u2013 the ones claiming to act as God\u2019s voice on Earth. In trying to understand natural phenomena \u2013 why volcanoes erupt, why the seasons change \u2013 humans looked to God for answers. In shaping the social world, from economics to love, religion served as our guide.<\/p>\n Humans, Kant argued, always had the capacity for reason. They just hadn\u2019t always had the confidence to use it. But with the American and later the French Revolution, a new era was dawning: reason would replace faith, and the human mind, unshackled from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more moral world. \u201cSapere aude!\u201d or \u201cHave courage to use your own understanding!, Kant urged his contemporaries.<\/p>\n Two and a half centuries later, one may wonder whether we are quietly slipping back into immaturity. An app telling us which road to take is one thing. But artificial intelligence threatens to become our new \u201cother\u201d \u2013 a silent authority that guides our thoughts and actions. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won courage to think for ourselves \u2013 and this time, not to gods or kings, but to code.<\/p>\n ChatGPT was launched only three years ago, and already one global survey, published in April, found that 82% of respondents had used AI<\/a> in the previous six months. Whether deciding to end a relationship or who to vote for, people are turning to machines for advice. According to OpenAI, 73% of user prompts concern non work-related topics<\/a>. Even more intriguing than our dependence on AI\u2019s judgment in daily life is what happens when we let it speak for us. Writing is now among the most common uses of ChatGPT, second only to practical requests such as DIY or cooking advice. The American author Joan Didion once said<\/a>: \u201cI write entirely to find out what I am thinking.\u201d What happens when we stop writing? Do we stop finding out?<\/p>\n