How Free Can Artificial Intelligence Be?

The chapter addresses the issue of freedom in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) by proposing two key perspectives: first, whether AI can possess freedom and, if so, to what extent; second, the conditions necessary to preserve human freedom in interactions with AI. The first part is examined through the authors’ concept of the human mind as capable of exercising free will within the framework of socially conditioned cultural ontology. It is argued that current AI paradigms (symbolic, perceptron, and generative), grounded in physicalist and communicative views of the mind, lack access to ontological reality, rendering them neither rational nor free. Consequently, the focus shifts to ensuring conditions for rational human social activity by mitigating AI’s potential negative impacts. To achieve this, a methodology is proposed for embedding three imperatives into AI legislation and policy: (1) social environment, and (3) preservation of human psychological integrity.