This article challenges the claim that human free will is determined by electrochemical processes in the brain, emphasizing that free will is a uniquely human judgmental ability shaped by experience and learning. It also discusses why artificial intelligence cannot replace human free will.
Human free will has guided the world until now. Anyone can act with free will, and it is guaranteed as a right. In times when freedom was restricted by certain classes, many people sacrificed their lives and fought to regain it. For example, humanity has changed the course of history through the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Free will underpins humanism, which is the driving force of human society today. Individual experiences and choices drive society, and the free will of many people intertwine to form society. However, the book Homo Deus questions the nature of free will. The author, Yuval Noah Harari, discusses whether free will is real or, like spirit, a term without substance. In his book, he argues that free will does not exist, and that most people’s free will will be replaced by algorithms. However, I believe that free will is here to stay.
Advancing science has negated the theistic religions of the past and empowered humans through the Scientific Revolution, but the denial of free will is shaking the roots of current humanism. New discoveries in the life sciences claim that human choices do not result from free will, but from deterministic and random electrochemical processes in the brain. As evidence, they point to the phenomenon that occurs when patients with epilepsy have the nerves connecting their left and right brains severed. This experiment shows that the left and right brains tell different stories, and they claim that the human self can be separated. However, it is not logically plausible to claim that the human brain can be artificially manipulated to lose its normal functioning, and then to use the results to argue that the self can be divided. A similar argument is made that we can manipulate the behavior of rats by electrically stimulating their brains. However, there is no rationalization for whether the behavior produced by that artificial stimulation is what the rat actually wanted to do, i.e., whether it was free will.
Therefore, my argument is that free will exists, but it is not independent of electrochemical processes in the brain. I believe that free will is learned through experience. As we grow up, we retain the emotions and knowledge we have gained from various things that happen to us. In other words, algorithms are memorized and learned according to what biologists call the electrochemical processes of the brain. But it’s not as simple as the algorithms in the book. What we see, hear, and feel varies from moment to moment, and how we feel varies greatly, and varies from person to person. Free will can be viewed as your own judgment in deciding what to do at a particular moment in the continuous flow of time, that is, what to do after this moment. For example, in electrical stimulation experiments in rats, electrical stimulation causes an electrochemical response in the brain that leads to movement. In humans, on the other hand, the brain’s electrochemical response must be triggered in order to perform an action, and the answer to the question of what triggers it is free will. Different people have different experiences in life, and therefore different forms of free will. For example, one person has been raised as a devout Christian, while the other has lived a life of domestic violence and committing crimes in a gang. If they encountered someone they didn’t like, what would their free will dictate? In the case of the Christian, they would try to respect the person as much as possible and try to reconcile their differences. In the latter case, however, the urge to kill the person is strong and likely to lead to violence.
Some might say. Is it possible for a faithful Christian believer to practice what God’s Word teaches, “Love your enemies”? Others might argue that it’s not really their free will to try to understand people they don’t like. Similarly, one might reject liberalism itself if living as a citizen of a state prevents you from exercising your free will. But I disagree. As complementary realities are introduced into human life, humans cannot realize perfect liberalism. This is why society is a mixture of liberalism, socialist humanism, and evolutionary humanism. The state is an invisible community, governed by law, where people can be restricted, harmed, and isolated if they act of their own free will. However, if individuals are taught to recognize this fiction, their sense of freedom will change accordingly. Similarly, if the fiction of religion is learned, the mind can be controlled by free will to overcome the urge to kill.
“In Homo Deus, it is said that free will will be replaced by algorithms, and artificial intelligence will replace ordinary people except those with physical superiority, and ordinary people will become surplus human beings. However, my argument is that AI will not replace people. All it is doing now is analyzing simple life patterns and suggesting what you should do. In order for AI to replace humans, its decisions must always be in line with yours. Only then will the algorithm be able to completely replace the decisions you make with your own free will. To do this, even if the AI has learned all of your emotions and memories from your life, the decisions it makes about what happens in the future will only be the best option based on the data. But what is this best option? Who’s best? Only the AI has the criteria to judge. No one can know whether it is aiming to do what is best for society, what is best for the user, or what is best for itself (the AI). This difference in judgment will make it impossible for AI to replace humans.
As AI continues to learn, it will be able to make perfect decisions. This is not an AI replacing an individual, but rather a new self. As mentioned above, the moment an AI replaces a human, the decisions made by both entities must always be the same in order to be a perfect replacement. The Turing Test explains what this means. In a Turing test, an AI and a human are placed behind a wall, and another person asks them the same question. If, when they answer, it is impossible to tell which answer is from the AI and which is from the human, then the AI is said to have human-like intelligence. Similarly, a test that is a perfect substitute for an individual is considered to be exactly the same if it always answers the same questions. And there will always be two different answers to every possible question at that moment, because there is no guarantee that the AI will set the same criteria for judgment as a human. Thus, human free will will continue to be the driving force of the world.
