EricC has made the argument that things like "free will" may be signs for actual objects (i.e. the thing being referred to does actually exist), but the structure of the sign, the phrase "free will" in this case, may not be robustly parsable. Many of us on the list are in love with metaphor. And this is an excellent case (in my not so humble opinion) showing where metaphor is insidious. Ignore the metaphor and replace "free will" with P or some other innocuous symbol.
My candidate for "free will" (by which I mean whatever actual thing/process we're pointing at when we use that term) is some behavior hidden behind a membrane, obscured by a boundary, not directly observable. We can debate what that behavior is. But because we can only infer what it is, indirectly observe it, the very particular details don't matter that much. What matters is the diversity/variation of the inputs and outputs. Given that preamble, my answer is that ChatGPT *can* exhibit "free will" if the cause of its variation is obscure to the user. E.g. for those of us who (mostly) use the API and can set the parameters like Temperature to get it to do what we want it to do, no "free will". But for those of us who *cannot* control those parameters, "free will". Claude surprised me this morning. So, today, I'm inclined to grant Claude "free will". To be clear, this is the same argument as is made by those who believe in hypnotism, body language lie detecting, neuro-linguistic programming, astrology, The Secret, the butterfly effect, etc. If you have access to the controlling parameters, then you admit less "free will". (cf Conant & Ashby) Another example, moralist conservatives might claim that drug addicts *choose* to be addicts ... versus the more humane "disease model" of addiction. It seems clear to me that if "free will" is at all coherent, it says more about the person using the term (the third part of the semiotic triad) than it says about reality: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1kalae8/chatgpt_induced_psychosis/ On 6/9/25 12:33 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
ChatGPT doesn’t have free will. Not even a little. That’s because it’s deterministic—with only a sprinkle of pretend randomness (the kind computers like to call “pseudo-random”). If you know the random seed, you know exactly what “random” choice it will make. Every time. So, during training: give it the same data and the same random seeds, and you’ll always get the same model with the same weights. No surprises. And once the model’s trained, the output for any input is fully determined—like a vending machine that gives you the same snack every time you press A1, no matter how persuasive you are. So, as much as it may sound like it’s making choices... it really isn’t. No mystery. No free will. Just maths and memory. On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 at 21:12, Marcus Daniels <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Could someone please take a definite position? Can ChatGPT have free will or not. If not, why not?____ __ __ *From:*Friam <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> *On Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm *Sent:* Monday, June 9, 2025 12:01 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Free will—ghost in the machine or just clever wiring?____ __ __ If you want to explain free will by entanglement then I would say free will is the opposite - a kind of un-entanglement or emergence.____ __ __ A biological system which grows while learning a language is an entangled system where two systems are merged into one, both entangled in the same structures. It is based on different codes stored in the same substance.____ __ __ Then you start to untangle them - for instance by self-consciousness - and get the biological animal on the one hand and the ghost in the machine on the other hand. A free will which is neither trapped by biological needs nor by advertising, brands and marketing would be the essence of a ghost in the machine, right? Although ghost buster Gilbert Ryle says such thing does not exist.____ ____ -J.____ __ __ __ __ -------- Original message --------____ From: Marcus Daniels <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> ____ Date: 6/9/25 6:19 PM (GMT+01:00) ____ To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> ____ Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free will—ghost in the machine or just clever wiring? ____ __ __ Here’s an idea that’s been helping me to procrastinate. ____ 1. Suppose that spacetime is an embedding of entanglement. An evolved quantum error correcting code (QEC) that enables a network to form geometries like the reality we see. ____ 2. Suppose the Big Bang the result of a unifying supermassive black hole. ____ ____ 3. Like other black holes, it had high entropy.____ ____ 4. That final black hole, lacking an exterior, launches a new universe. ____ ____ 5. The new universe might appear to be smooth in its geometric expansion, but that would only because of the embedded QEC. It would be rich with unseen entanglement that was not subject to the QEC.____ ____ 6. In this view, universes could evolve or even be nested. Universes with no or crude QECs would be unstable and prone to collapse. Universes with strong QECs could have orderly environments where life could emerge, as Eric describes in his book.____ 7. A Big Crunch would be like checkpointing a virtual machine. The evolved QECs could still be in the checkpoint and cause the next version of the universe to inherit its desirable properties. Maybe it would be like a junkyard with some interesting parts that would find novel uses in the next go. 8. Speculating further, very sophisticated civilizations (after billions of years) might discover how to stack the deck to invent new metaphysics at the next Big Bang. Simple beings, like humans – not being billions of years old -- might invent words for that like God.____ ____ 9. The whole thing could be deterministic and not facilitate any free will! Now I should get back to work.____ ____ *From: *Friam <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of Pieter Steenekamp <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> *Date: *Sunday, June 8, 2025 at 10:38 PM *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> *Subject: *[FRIAM] Free will—ghost in the machine or just clever wiring?____ Seth Lloyd’s Turing test for free will (https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/lloyd/Turing_Test.pdf <https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/lloyd/Turing_Test.pdf>) is to consciousness what EPR was to quantum physics: a challenge to the theory's completeness. EPR said quantum weirdness must hide something deeper; Bell said “let's test that”—and nature replied, “nope, it’s weird all the way down.” Nobel Prize, case closed. Lloyd asks: can we prove the mind is just machinery? His test says: build a machine that behaves indistinguishably from a human and believes it has free will. If you succeed—great. But failure proves nothing. Unlike Bell’s inequality, this test can only confirm, never deny. No ghost-busting here. Until then? It’s speculation. The Standard Model explains almost everything—except the quantum gremlins and how observation messes things up. So maybe the mind still has an ace up its sleeve. Or a soul. Or a bug in the code.____
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