As technology increasingly intervenes in and influences our decisions, behaviors, perceptions, and physical states, is the substantive scope of free will truly being diminished?
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/12/1158376
Technology can intervene in two different ways: supporting decision-making (as with pacemakers or insulin pumps) or substituting it (as with automated systems that decide on our behalf). Only the latter raises concerns about free will.
If automation replaces human choices entirely, free will diminishes not as a natural law but because people stop exercising it. The danger comes from political frameworks that enforce automated decisions and suppress responsibility — a path toward technocratic authoritarianism. Machines themselves cannot assume responsibility or be held accountable; as long as society recognizes this necessity, free will cannot truly be replaced.
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