On machine creativity and the notion of free will

TL;DR

This paper explores how embodied artificial agents can exhibit a primitive sense of creativity and freedom within the constraints of physical law, proposing a model that bridges physical determinism and perceived free will.

Contribution

It introduces a model of artificial agency using projective simulation that demonstrates primitive creativity and discusses how higher entities might experience a form of freedom despite physical laws.

Findings

Artificial agents can exhibit primitive creativity within physical constraints.

A model of projective simulation enables autonomous decision-making.

The framework suggests a pathway for understanding freedom in physical systems.

Abstract

We discuss the possibility of freedom of action in embodied systems that are, with no exception and at all scales of their body, subject to physical law. We relate the discussion to a model of an artificial agent that exhibits a primitive notion of creativity and freedom in dealing with its environment, which is part of a recently introduced scheme of information processing called projective simulation. This provides an explicit proposal on how we can reconcile our understanding of universal physical law with the idea that higher biological entities can acquire a notion of freedom that allows them to increasingly detach themselves from a strict causal embedding into the surrounding world.