Free Will in action in a digital and AI world

In December 2025 Frantz Rowe presented, on behalf of David and Frantz, their latest paper on Free Will in IS, at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

Abstract: Building on our previous framework for Free Will (2021) we develop an innovative new framework built upon the old information-decision-action (IDA) cycle, which we extend into a more contemporary informating-decision-action-willing cycle (IDAW). Through this framework, we ask: are AI and big tech undermining liberal democracies through technologies that disturb people’s ability to express free will? We lay out the philosophical position on free will known as metaphysical libertarian incompatibilism, following Kane’s and showing how it can be combined with Taylor’s notion of agency. We then examine its differences to political libertarianism, and its alignment with liberal democracies. We briefly present four cases of concern focusing on each of the four dimensions of the framework, where the advent of artificial intelligence in its current form –the surveillance-intention economy brought to us by billionaire political libertarians – presents, we argue, a potential threat to our ability to experience and express free will.

Kreps, David and Rowe, Frantz, “Free Will in action in a digital and AI world” (2025). ICIS 2025 Proceedings. 17.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2025/is_researchmethods/is_researchmethods/17