Compatibilists attribute free will to robots if their behavior meets specific autonomy criteria.
the verdict
CONTESTED
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refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
4 sources for · 1 against
Scholarly sources are divided, with some computational compatibilist frameworks arguing that artificial intelligence systems can be attributed operational free will or agency when meeting specific structural or behavioral criteria, while other philosophical perspectives maintain that moral agency and autonomy are exclusively human attributes.
Debates on lethal autonomous weapon systems have proliferated in the past 5 years. Ethical concerns have been voiced about a possible raise in the number of wrongs and crimes in military operations and about the creation of a "responsibility gap" for harms caused by these systems. To address these concerns, the principle of "meaningful human control" has been introduced in the legal-political debate; according to this principle, humans not computers and their algorithms should ultimately remain in control of, and thus morally responsible for, relevant decisions about (lethal) military operations. However, policy-makers and technical designers lack a detailed theory of what "meaningful human control" exactly means. In this paper, we lay the foundation of a philosophical account of meaningful human control, based on the concept of "guidance control" as elaborated in the philosophical debate on free will and moral responsibility. Following the ideals of "Responsible Innovation" and "Value-sensitive Design," our account of meaningful human control is cast in the form of design requirements. We identify two general necessary conditions to be satisfied for an autonomous system to remain under meaningful human control: first, a "tracking" condition, according to which the system should be able to respond to both the relevant moral reasons of the humans designing and deploying the system and the relevant facts in the environment in which the system operates; second, a "tracing" condition, according to which the system should be designed in such a way as to grant the possibility to always trace back the outcome of its operations to at least one human along the chain of design and operation. As we think that meaningful human control can be one of the central notions in ethics of robotics and AI, in the last part of the paper, we start exploring the implications of our account for the design and use of non-military autonomous systems, for instance, self-driving cars.
A discussion concerning whether to conceive Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems as responsible moral entities, also known as "artificial moral agents" (AMAs), has been going on for some time. In this regard, we argue that the notion of "moral agency" is to be attributed only to humans based on their autonomy and sentience, which AI systems lack. We analyze human responsibility in the presence of AI systems in terms of meaningful control and due diligence and argue against fully automated systems in medicine. With this perspective in mind, we focus on the use of AI-based diagnostic systems and shed light on the complex networks of persons, organizations and artifacts that come to be when AI systems are designed, developed, and used in medicine. We then discuss relational criteria of judgment in support of the attribution of responsibility to humans when adverse events are caused or induced by errors in AI systems.
Artificial intelligence (AI) advancements are changing people's lives in ways never imagined before. We argue that ethics used to be put in perspective by seeing technology as an instrument during the first machine age. However, the second machine age is already a reality, and the changes brought by AI are reshaping how people interact and flourish. That said, ethics must also be analyzed as a requirement in the content. To expose this argument, we bring three critical points - autonomy, right of explanation, and value alignment - to guide the debate of why ethics must be part of the systems, not just in the principles to guide the users. In the end, our discussion leads to a reflection on the redefinition of AI's moral agency. Our distinguishing argument is that ethical questioning must be solved only after giving AI moral agency, even if not at the same human level. For future research, we suggest appreciating new ways of seeing ethics and finding a place for machines, using the inputs of the models we have been using for centuries but adapting to the new reality of the coexistence of artificial intelligence and humans.
Freedom Without Conscience: Computational Compatibilism and Moral Attribution in Artificial Intelligence Systems: International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction: Vol 42, No 11
## Abstract
This paper, developed within the framework of computational compatibilism, proposes a functional reconceptualization of freedom in artificial systems. Since intentionality or consciousness cannot be attributed to AI, some agents can nonetheless be considered free in an operational sense when they act within stochastic search spaces that allow exploration of alternatives under uncertainty. This “structural freedom,” though devoid of subjectivity, is normatively relevant. From this idea, a theory of functional moral attribution is outlined: artificial systems should be ethically evaluated not for what they are internally, but for their role in social, technical, and legal contexts. Responsibility is conceived as contextual and distributed, applicable to systems whose actions affect other agents. Three cases—a medical recommendation system, an autonomous financial agent, and a content curation algorithm—illustrate the model’s applicability. The article defends an expanded notion of responsibil
Can AI systems have free will? | Synthese | Springer Nature Link
# Can AI systems have free will?
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- Published: 22 August 2025
- Volume 206, article number 115 (2025)
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## 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.
### Do people believe that machines have minds and free will? Empirical evidence on mind perception and
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