Decomposing Autonomy: Explaining AI Technology Acceptance Through a Liberty-Based Framework

Human autonomy is a core concept that helps explain the acceptance of and interaction with computer systems and AI technology. However, autonomy is often vaguely defined and conflated with related constructs. This paper disentangles autonomy by integrating the dualistic nature of positive and negative liberty from the perspective of political philosophy. Using an online vignette study with N=194 participants, we show that positive and negative liberty act as correlated but distinct dimensions of the autonomy foundation. While negative liberty predicts the sense of agency, positive liberty is a key dimension for people’s willingness to use technology. We argue that this dualistic stand - positive liberty as the freedom to pursue authentic goals, and negative liberty as the freedom from external constraints - offers a valuable and actionable perspective on human autonomy that can inform future system design and better answer the ambivalent question “how much autonomy is enough”?