Free will is a widely discussed subject with several billions of opinions on the matter. Here are my two cents.
A common sense definition: free will is the ability to act at one’s own discretion. It is to make conscious choices of our own volition about anything under our control. Free will, apart from being a big part of our lives is a multifaceted issue, so here are some perspectives:
Physical perspective: As long as we assume the world is material and leave any out-worldly issues to somebody else, there is no place for free will in our current understanding of the material world.
The causality has two components: deterministic and random. The random component is out of our control by definition, some things happen by chance – end of story. The deterministic component is a bit more complicated: we are our history (not our choice in a long term) and the circumstances are just there. Our actions are the result of a long chain of events starting from the Big Bang. Genetics, family, the luck to be born here or there, everything has its contribution and none of it is our choice. A very different question is if we can infer our actions or at least the deterministic part. It depends on our understanding of ourselves and the related laws of nature. I want to say: yes we can but if we are intelligent enough.
Phycological/personal perspective: That perspective is the biggest concern for each one of us.
Imagine you have a toddler and you follow every step he/she makes. After a while, you can predict with a very good probability what would be our kid’s reaction be to any circumstances. For you, your kid will be as predictable as anything could be, but your kid feels mostly free. He/she is conscious that he/she makes his/her own decisions and that is our instinctive (default) feeling of being free. All that means that free will depends on our understanding and knowledge: the more we know the less we consider ourselves really free.
Free will is a feeling that we need to feel in control, without that feeling we would perceive ourselves as entrapped or imprisoned. It does not matter if the feeling is based on reality or not. Being delusional may have some disadvantages but that is the price we pay to have a reason to get up in the morning.
Sociological perspective: Let’s continue with the toddler example. Would you tell your toddler that you know in advance every step he/she will make? I guess not. What good that will bring, just a good excuse to do “bad” things because it wouldn’t be his/her fault. So what we do: we keep an illusion of free will along with Santa Claus. That illusion (or delusion) will allow us to punish or reward the child because we need to guide their behavior. That way we teach our kid responsibility, which from our point of view is just teaching them to include the consequences of their actions in the decision-making process.
One may say that free will is a social convention that helps us live a responsible life and be just a bit kinder to one another. It’s a precondition for a better decision process which includes an awareness of the consequences of our actions in the process.
In olden times God was the vessel of that delusion, gifting humans with free will, only that he could judge them later. The idea may contradict the concept of divine plan (or fate) but I don’t recall a case when logical contradiction has been a problem for religion. Jean-Paul Sartre goes even further by saying that we are cursed to be free. Our criminal law is based on the assumption of free will, ergo: no free will = no crime. Without free will, we would be just preprogrammed entities that interact with each other. Can you judge the weather?
Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting any behavior change one way or another. For me, it’s purely an intellectual exercise, and for you – hopefully some clarification and brain food on the matter.

In the long term, humanity is doomed. There is no doubt in my mind. The reason to think that is relatively simple: we are made out of stories and these stories do not work well with technological progress. Y.N. Harari convincingly explains in “Sapiens” that the only reason for us to be a leading species on Earth is that we can organize ourselves using shared stories – religions, nations, money, human rights, …you name it and we will write a story about it. Stories are so important to us that we spend a significant part (if not all) of our lives having life satisfaction as part of a story. For the story’s sake, we rage wars, we do anything to anybody (I leave it to your imagination). Yes, we build civilizations and conquer nature but can we survive the delusion that there is more in life than a good story?
I may sound a bit abstract. Let me give you an example: imagine an authoritarian leader with access to a doomsday weapon. There are a few of them around. Imagine now that the leader for some reason has his back to the wall and there is no way out, except… Except he blackmails the world with his super-weapon, in his mind what is the point in the world’s existence if he (and his people) are to be vanquished? There is no common sense or survival instinct able to beat a fanatic conviction in some story out of which you don’t exist.
At present, there are a few leaders with access to such type of doom device (MI’s “rabbit’s foot”) but the technology advances, and people with such access will multiply with time and hence the risk. At some point in time, a series of bad luck events will result in triggering the device and…
The best-case scenario afterward would be that we will be pushed back a few to 100 thousand years (Stone Age). The worst case will be the extinction of almost all multicellular organisms.
Can I suggest an exit strategy? Yes, but you are not gonna like it! AGI genetically reconstructs (recreates) 42 of the most popular species including humans.

A definition must be specific in a way that no other thing would be described by the same definition. A definition must be useful, usually by being part of a larger picture (context). For example, if we say that consciousness is the fact that we have experiences is specific enough but completely useless. Useless because there is no larger context, each and every one of us is its own world (subjective experience). On the other end of the spectrum is physicalism/materialism: consciousness is an emerging property of matter more specifically our mind. It emerges in the evolutionary development of our brain, neurons, etc. when a certain level of complexity is reached so we can include ourselves as entity in the model of the world that we run and constantly update. It is useful enough but many people will object because all advanced robots use this approach in order to interact with the environment. Nobody would convince the public that any of these robots is conscious. In the latter case is about public perception but politics is something much more real than my scribbles here.
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Consciousness, free will, and our human identity
We need the illusion of the first two to make the feeling of the third one real.
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Nick Bostrom | The Vulnerable World Hypothesis!
1. The technologies are not good or bad by themselves. The intended purpose could be good or bad but they can always be repurposed. What Bostrom effectively suggests is to stop technological progress or put a lid on the bowl on his terms and throw the key away.
2. Even if we accept his hypothesis of white/black balls and try to prevent civilization destruction, I don’t see any power now or in the near future with enough control to do that. On top of that we need to avoid the 1984 scenario, otherwise, what’s the point?
3. I’m not saying civilization Armageddon is not a real threat but addressing human rationality in order to find a solution is hopeless (pathetic even). I don’t know any large-scale decision in history that have been made after rational deliberation, so that would be the first. I think the only way that we have some small chance is to go through some cataclysmic event that will change humanity’s state of mind hopefully for the better.
4. AGI may offer a radical rational power but for now that is pure speculation.
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Does AI understand the answers it gives us or just imitating/mimicking understanding? There are at least two sides to that:
1. Phycological – the answer must fit in sufficiently our worldview and more specifically the particular area of expertise. It must sound convincing enough for us to engage. Optionally, it would be nice if the answer is not trivial but challenges us intellectually. As stated the answer received is fulfilling only psychological needs. If you aim to feel better about yourself by having the feeling that you understand, you don’t need more than that.
To answer the question of whether AI understands the matter of discussion is a very subjective stance. The user’s level of ante facto (before the fact) understanding could vary hugely, hence the way they accept the AI answer as “understanding”.
2. Practical (scientific) – if you are gonna use the answer in some way (explicitly or implicitly) for modeling the reality. In this case, any valid method for verification/falsification of the model based on the AI response would be good for your particular inference purposes. We would call AI response understanding if the precision level of inference is close (or better) than an expert from the respective field. There is some level of subjectivity here as well – who is a genuine expert, can we always double-check with a human and compare the inference precision, etc.? Still, that criterium is much more suitable for practical and scientific purposes because of its relative objectivity. In the end how we would qualify the AI response as understanding or not is irrelevant if it works!

Imagine you can hack the computer that runs the simulation of the universe.
1. What would you do first?
2. Would you make yourself happy from now to the end of time?
3. Would you let anybody else know about that?
4. Do you think that there is any shared meaning or purpose that will make people live in harmony?
5. On second thought, are you certain that you would change anything except a really big bank account?
6. Maybe the thought that you can change anything is reward enough? ..so somebody already done it?