AI systems can have free will if seen as intentional agents
Can AI systems have free will?
Artificial IntelligenceComputers and Society
Summary
This paper explores whether AI can have free will. Instead of looking for randomness or unpredictability, the authors suggest we ask if AI systems can be seen as intentional agents that can choose between options and control their actions. If we can explain their behavior this way, then it makes sense to say they have free will in a practical sense. This approach focuses on how we interpret AI behavior rather than mysterious qualities inside the AI.
What this means in practice
- •For ai ethics teams: Develop frameworks to assess AI decision-making by treating AI as intentional agents with free will under the proposed pragmatic criteria.
- •For software developers: Design AI behaviors that can be interpreted as making meaningful choices, supporting clearer explanations and user trust in AI actions.
A position paper. It proposes an approach and reports no results.
Authors
Christian List
Abstract
While there has been much discussion of whether AI systems could function as moral agents or acquire sentience, there has been very little discussion of whether AI systems could have free will. I sketch a framework for thinking about this question, inspired by Daniel Dennett's work. I argue that, to determine whether an AI system has free will, we should not look for some mysterious property, expect its underlying algorithms to be indeterministic, or ask whether the system is unpredictable. Rather, we should simply ask whether we have good explanatory reasons to view the system as an intentional agent, with the capacity for choice between alternative possibilities and control over the resulting actions. If the answer is "yes", then the system counts as having free will in a pragmatic and diagnostically useful sense.