Physicist Unveils a 'Turing Test' For Free Will

KentuckyFC writes "The problem of free will is one of the great unsolved puzzles in science, not to mention philosophy, theology, jurisprudence and so on. The basic question is whether we are able to make decisions for ourselves or whether the outcomes are predetermined and the notion of choice is merely an illusion. Now a leading theoretical physicist has outlined a 'Turing Test' for free will and says that while simple devices such as thermostats cannot pass, more complex ones like iPhones might. The test is based on an extension of Turing's halting problem in computer science. This states that there is no general way of knowing how an algorithm will finish, other than to run it. This means that when a human has to make a decision, there is no way of knowing in advance how it will end up. In other words, the familiar feeling of not knowing the final decision until it is thought through is a necessary feature of the decision-making process and why we have the impression of free will. This leads to a simple set of questions that forms a kind of Turing test for free will. These show how simple decision-making devices such as thermostats cannot believe they have free will while humans can. A more interesting question relates to decision-makers of intermediate complexity, such as a smartphone. As the author puts it, this 'seems to possess all the criteria required for free will, and behaves as if it has it.'"

Presence of self-awareness

[TWX]

Wouldn't the presence of self-awareness be a prerequisite, so just about every device should fail, before even getting to the actual test?

Re:Siri doesn't have free will

[CapOblivious2010]

What if someone gave you absolutely irrefutable proof that there's no such thing as free will, but you chose not to believe it?

Re:appearing to have free will

[TaoPhoenix]

"But is there really any difference between having free will and appearing to have free will? Or, put another way, is there really any difference between the illusion of free will and free will? Is "free will" even a clearly defined concept? Some philosophers think not."

I think I am in the camp of something like "Whether anyone has free will or not for religious reasons, let's assume free will, then does an AI have free will? Yes."

In the many millions of funds I don't have, I believe that all thoughts are model-able. You might not get the original creative spark, but once the thought is known, it is model-able.

What we think of "free will" is some mix of heuristics "plus a beer". I'll repeat my private mini theory that we're racially terrified of true AI because that will forever change what we do with ourselves vs machines.

Taking a simple act that can work for both people and AI, "Do I GetData or Do I Get IntangibleHealingBenefit"? For that second one, the human goes to sleep and the AI DeFrags/Prunes/Optimizes its KnowledgeBase. Both "Feel/CanBeMadeToSimulateFeeling" the struggle between data and systems management.

Whatever the heuristics are between the "beings", the act of decision is the same. And that's why it's not a magical "human right of free will". AI Free Will is a snap. We're just desperately afraid of it. See T2, "If the wrong heuristic gets in there..." - well that's what sociopathic killers are. Humans running a badly flawed HumanOS.

Re:appearing to have free will

[rgbatduke]

Whatever the heuristics are between the "beings", the act of decision is the same. And that's why it's not a magical "human right of free will". AI Free Will is a snap. We're just desperately afraid of it. See T2, "If the wrong heuristic gets in there..." - well that's what sociopathic killers are. Humans running a badly flawed HumanOS.

Well, there is one small difference. With an AI, one can always, precisely, deconstruct why and how the system makes the decision that it makes, unless it uses truly random sources to distribute choices over some space at some point. Heinlein recognized the importance of unpredictability in free will long, long before the top article, and his AIs always had lots of random number generators built in even though he couldn't precisely articulate why. Random number generators of course, are not random at all, so one has to resort to quantum sources or entropic sources where one is truly missing the information needed to predict the decision and where there is a probability that, given precisely the same initial conditions, they AI would decide differently.

With a human intelligence (HI), one cannot ever deconstruct why and how the system makes the decision that it makes. It is "random" in at least the sense of being unpredictable at countless levels involving the whole non-Markovian process of evolution from the very first cell through to the present organism making the decision. Worse, even the human itself doesn't know why it makes the decision it makes, not really. Chocolate or Vanilla ice cream today? "Chocolate because I like chocolate more than vanilla" is ultimately semantically null, because one cannot answer why one likes chocolate more than vanilla, and no matter what set of reasons one cooks up for it the ultimate answer is associated with a subjective response that is a sublime blend of (evolutionarily and experientially) preprogrammed stuff, experience, and the "mood of the moment", utterly unpredictable.

rgb

Re:Siri doesn't have free will

[Mr. Slippery]

Is "free will" even a clearly defined concept?

No, it's not. The whole question is mis-asked. Raymond Smullyan's piece Is God A Taoist? [mit.edu] has the best explanation I've seen:

Mortal:
What do you mean that I cannot conflict with nature? Suppose I were to become very stubborn, and I determined not to obey the laws of nature. What could stop me? If I became sufficiently stubborn even you could not stop me!

God:
You are absolutely right! I certainly could not stop you. Nothing could stop you. But there is no need to stop you, because you could not even start! As Goethe very beautifully expressed it, "In trying to oppose Nature, we are, in the very process of doing so, acting according to the laws of nature!" Don't you see that the so-called "laws of nature" are nothing more than a description of how in fact you and other beings do act? They are merely a description of how you act, not a prescription of of how you should act, not a power or force which compels or determines your acts. To be valid a law of nature must take into account how in fact you do act, or, if you like, how you choose to act.

Mortal:
So you really claim that I am incapable of determining to act against natural law?

God:
It is interesting that you have twice now used the phrase "determined to act" instead of "chosen to act." This identification is quite common. Often one uses the statement "I am determined to do this" synonymously with "I have chosen to do this." This very psychological identification should reveal that determinism and choice are much closer than they might appear. Of course, you might well say that the doctrine of free will says that it is you who are doing the determining, whereas the doctrine of determinism appears to say that your acts are determined by something apparently outside you. But the confusion is largely caused by your bifurcation of reality into the "you" and the "not you." Really now, just where do you leave off and the rest of the universe begin? Or where does the rest of the universe leave off and you begin? Once you can see the so-called "you" and the so-called "nature" as a continuous whole, then you can never again be bothered by such questions as whether it is you who are controlling nature or nature who is controlling you. Thus the muddle of free will versus determinism will vanish. If I may use a crude analogy, imagine two bodies moving toward each other by virtue of gravitational attraction. Each body, if sentient, might wonder whether it is he or the other fellow who is exerting the "force." In a way it is both, in a way it is neither. It is best to say that it is the configuration of the two which is crucial.