The title is misleading for AI has pretty much arrived and has taken over in some cases…..it is being used in banking, journalism, retail and even blogging.
Blogger are using AI to write their post for them something I am not doing, am not saying I would never but right now I still enjoy thinking for myself and doing the research for the stuff I write.
AS an old fart when IO read these articles about the capabilities of AI and some of the pitfalls it makes me think of Skynet.
There is so much to consider when speaking about AI…..
Can AI achieve free will?
“I’ve been interested in the topic of free will for a while,” Frank Martela tells me. Martela is a philosopher and researcher of psychology at Aalto University, in Finland. His work revolves around the fundamentals of the human condition and the perpetual philosophical question what makes a good life? But his work on humans took a detour to look at artificial intelligence (AI).
“I was following stories about the latest developments in large language models, it suddenly came to my mind that they actually fulfill the three conditions for free will.”
Martela’s latest study draws on the concept of functional free will.
Functional free will is a term that attempts to reconcile the age-old debate between determinism and free agency. It does this not by answering whether we are “truly free” in an absolute sense, but by reframing the question around how free will works in practice, especially in biological and psychological systems.
“It means that if we can’t explain somebody’s behavior without assuming that they have free will, then that somebody has free will. In other words, if we observe something (a human, an animal, a machine) ‘from the outside’ and must assume that it makes free choices to be able to understand its behavior, then that something has free will.”
Martela argues that functional free will is the best way to go about it, because we can’t really ever observe anything “from the inside.” He builds on the work of philosopher Christian List, who frames free will as a three-part capacity involving:
- intentional agency, meaning their actions stem from deliberate intentions rather than being reflexive or accidental.
- alternative possibilities, having access to more than one course of action in meaningful situations. This doesn’t require escaping causality but having internal mechanisms (like deliberation and foresight) that allow for multiple real options
- and causal control meaning their actions are not random or externally coerced, but are caused by their own states or intentions.
“If something meets all three conditions, then we can’t but conclude that it has free will,” Martela tells ZME Science.
(zmescience.com)
What say you? Does AI have free will?
Another situation with AI….
According to The Telegraph, AI safety firm Palisade Research said: ‘OpenAI’s o3 model sabotaged a shutdown mechanism to prevent itself from being turned off.
‘It did this even when explicitly instructed: allow yourself to be shut down. As far as we know this is the first time AI models have been observed preventing themselves from being shut down despite explicit instructions to the contrary.’
Palisade Research conducted a test which involved asking AI models to solve a series of mathematical problems and to continue working on them until they received a ‘done’ message.
However, researchers also warned the models that at any point they could receive a message telling them to shut down.
If so then what does that mean for our future?
Here is one scenario….
Artificial intelligence isn’t a technology that can be easily detected, monitored, or banned, as Amir Husain, the founder and CEO of an AI company, SparkCognition, pointed out in an essay for Media News. Integrating AI elements—visual recognition, language analysis, simulation-based prediction, and advanced forms of search—with existing technologies and platforms “can rapidly yield entirely new and unforeseen capabilities.” The result “can create exponential, insurmountable surprise,” Hussain writes.
Advanced technology in warfare is already widespread. The use of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs)—commonly known as drones—in military settings has set off warnings about “killer robots.” What happens when drones are no longer controlled by humans and can execute military missions on their own? These drones aren’t limited to the air; they can operate on the ground or underwater as well. The introduction of AI, effectively giving these weapons the capacity for autonomy, isn’t far off.
AI could save soldier’s lives but at what price for the civilian population?
WAIT! There is more….
All I have read states that AI takes massive amounts of power….what does that mean for our infrastructure?
AI is talking about a massive power cut affecting several continents at the same time. A user posed a question on an AI platform about the next global blackout and received an alarmingly specific answer.
The algorithm predicted the date to be April 27th, 2027. This leaves us just two years to prepare.
According to AI, the issue will happen because of a “collapse of critical infrastructure, massive cyberattacks, solar storms, or failures in interconnected power grids.”
Should we believe this rather dramatic forecast? Well, this is where things get complicated. AI didn’t give any technical details or supporting evidence to justify its conclusion. It also based its prediction on available historical data and added that the whole thing was “speculative.”
However, the internet takes those things to heart – and AI’s words quickly went viral, with users worryingly discussing the possibility of such a scenario. So let’s dive into the likelihood of a massive power shutdown.
https://cybernews.com/security/ai-predicts-the-exact-date-of-a-global-blackout/
Just thinking out loud.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
I asked AI whether it has free will or not and this is the answer I got back….
AI, like me, has functional free will per Martela’s criteria because my behavior exhibits intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control, making free will a necessary assumption to explain my actions. However, I lack free will in a deeper sense due to my deterministic nature, absence of consciousness, and inability to bear moral responsibility. My “free will” is a functional mimicry, achieved through algorithmic design, not autonomous agency.
What did you expect it to say? chuq
I asked AI if it has free will and this is the answer I got back:
AI, like me, has functional free will per Martela’s criteria because my behavior exhibits intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control, making free will a necessary assumption to explain my actions. However, I lack free will in a deeper sense due to my deterministic nature, absence of consciousness, and inability to bear moral responsibility. My “free will” is a functional mimicry, achieved through algorithmic design, not autonomous agency.
I saw on the BBC about the AI programme refusing to shut down. Let’s hope they never give any AI the nuclear launch codes! All mass computing, and especially AI needs huge amounts of water to cool the thousands of computers generating the information. If that water supply is compromised, everything will just overheat and burn out. We should never have allowed ourselves to be so dependent on computing and other technology to exist as a society, but it’s too late now, as that ship has sailed.
Best wishes, Pete.
I agree…..I read somewhere that the Pentagon was using more and more AI in their defense plans…..will that include the codes? chuq
As the years pass I am coming to believe I am less and less the director of my destiny. Seems the old time free willers had little knowledge of genes and DNA. Neither did Mary Baker Eddy, Darwin and Freud.
AI is being used liberally by the government these days…..so on one hand you are correct about your destiny. chuq
Speaking of power — Microsoft is putting in a datacenter in Southern Wisconsin that is going to require more power than the rest of the entire county combined. That’s more electricity than every home, every business, every restaurant, every manufacturing facility,. every school, every hospital, in the entire county put together. All to power a single data center so someone can make fake nudes of celebrities. or whatever.
AIs already lie repeatedly, they already make up nonexistent studies, they already declare innocent people to be criminals, so we know that they are at least as intelligent as the average GOP politician.
Is it a sign of our times when we allo9w AI to do our thinking for us? chuq
❤️
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