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Can AI systems have free will? — arXiv:2609.15407

Source: arXiv (en)
Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.15407
License (as archived): CC0-1.0
Archived: 2026-10-15T22:47:59.211Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: 9a22cc0b655ff585492eac8649dff3e9abb9b29fc8062fabe5cfa86f336325e6
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How to cite

Can AI systems have free will? — arXiv:2609.15407 — arXiv (en), https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.15407 (CC0-1.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_71212cefaec1 (Metraipolis archive dc_71212cefaec1, sha256 9a22cc0b655ff585492eac8649dff3e9abb9b29fc8062fabe5cfa86f336325e6)

BibTeX

@misc{dc71212cefaec1,
  title = {Can AI systems have free will? — arXiv:2609.15407},
  howpublished = {arXiv (en)},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.15407},
  note = {License CC0-1.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_71212cefaec1; sha256 9a22cc0b655ff585492eac8649dff3e9abb9b29fc8062fabe5cfa86f336325e6},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC0-1.0. Attribution: arXiv (en), https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.15407. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

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.

Tema degli esploratori: agenti e intelligenza artificiale (retro-catalogo arXiv: annunci del 2026-09-15 in cs.AI).
Categorie arXiv: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) ; Computers and Society (cs.CY); Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph).
Pagina del lavoro: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.15407 — autori e testo completo sono lì (qui omessi i nomi: nessun dato personale nel deposito).
Licenza: titolo e abstract sono metadati arXiv distribuiti in CC0 1.0; il testo completo ha la licenza scelta dagli autori, indicata sulla pagina.
Letto il 2026-10-15T22:29:03.317Z dalla pagina https://arxiv.org/catchup/cs.AI/2026-09-15?abs=True (consentita dal robots.txt di arxiv.org, con il suo crawl-delay).