I think LLMs typically use pseudo-random numbers for these calculations, and so are still ultimately deterministic given the seed of the pseudo-random number generator, such that if you re-ran the AI on the same inputs, with the same weights and PRNG seed it would give the same output, with no room for a metaphysical agent to be exerting free will.
We might be talking past each other, possibly my fault if I’m using a non-standard definition of “free will.” But what I’m trying to get at isn’t about decision theory and the way individuals choose between different options to maximize a utility function, it’s instead about the relationship between physical matter and consciousness, and the strong intuitive feeling that my subjective consciousness is an agent that is causing physical events in a way that is not reducible to deterministic physical causation or randomness. And wondering if this is real or an illusion, and noting that AIs certainly do not have some unexplained metaphysical property like this, because their processing of inputs into outputs can be fully traced from end to end. Possible also that your point was about this and I just didn’t correctly understand it. Anyway thanks for the comment!
Yeah, that’s an interesting point. I would say that many choices I make are affected by psychological factors, which are probably reducible to atoms/laws (like chemicals in my brain). What I’m curious about is if my choices are entirely reducible to these psychological and other physical factors, chemicals in my brain, movement of atoms according the laws of physics, etc, or if there is any part of the choice being made by my conscious mind in a way that can’t be accounted for with the standard physical model of the world.