Although artificial intelligence currently lacks the ability to act directly on hardware or software, there are already systems like Operator that show an emerging capacity to operate within the digital realm. However, these actions are still limited to controlled environments and specific tasks. The potential to develop a kind of ‘synthetic free will’ that would allow AI to make more autonomous decisions—both in the digital world and the physical world through robots and other devices—is a promising and fascinating direction.
One of the main reasons AI has not yet reached this level of free will is its inability to create synthetic goals, a sort of synthetic consciousness that would allow it to set its own objectives. This is not only a technical limitation, but also a necessary precaution given the complexity and risks involved in granting machines such a high level of autonomy.