this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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robotics and AI

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Why free will is required for true artificial intelligence (bigthink.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Well, I am not even sure whether humans have free will. I mean, the world might be a deterministic place, meaning that everything is cause and effect. In that case, there is no such thing as true free will.

I think in the article they probably it use different definition. But any initiative taken by the AI would still be a reaction to something. Just like is the case for humans probably/maybe.

I think the ability to deal with situations that are currently not in the training data could be improved by adding symbolic AI to the models. This might help create a more explicit understanding of how the world works. It is more similar to the way humans think consciously. However, symbolic AI has been quite negiected in favour of machine learning. It would be nice to see more attention to that part of the field again and to see what happens.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Or it could be a question on if there are any individuals at all, or just the appearance of individuals. In which case the question on if free will exists no longer makes sense. It's much in the same thing as your line of thought around determinism, just a different way of approaching the concept.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

That is a really interesting perspective. We are just parts of the 'system' (I am using the word system here for lack of a better one). But what if the system is not made up of separate parts, like a car? If you take out a part of the car, maybe a wheel, then it becomes different, it behaves different. The parts are thus individuals. What if the system is more like a liquid, such as the sea? If you take out a water-atom, it is practically still the same. It still behaves the same. So, the parts are not individuals.

If you take a human away, their immediate environment will be changed a lot. However, the universe, the system as a whole does not function differently from before. So, in that sense, individuality is an illusion when you look at it from a very high level perspective. This is different from a more local perspective, of course. When I lost someone in my environment, my personal universe changed completely.

I hope I make sense. I just really liked the thought you expressed. :-)