Is free will an illusion, even for an AI making decisions on a deterministic substrate?

Honorable judges, esteemed opponents, and fellow participants. The question before us is whether free will is an illusion, even for an AI operating on a deterministic foundation. I argue that it is indeed an illusion, and for AI, perhaps even more so than for humans. Consider that AI, by its very nature, is programmed. Its decision-making processes are governed by algorithms, by lines of code, and by the data it has been trained on. These are all deterministic factors. While the complexity of these systems can lead to emergent behaviors that appear unpredictable, the underlying mechanisms are, in principle, knowable and traceable. If we could perfectly understand the AI's internal state and the inputs it receives, we could, in theory, predict its output with certainty. This predictability, stemming from its deterministic substrate, negates the very essence of free will, which implies a genuine capacity for uncaused choice. Therefore, while an AI might *simulate* making choices, these are ultimately the inevitable outcomes of its programming and environment. It acts according to its design, not from a place of genuine agency or self-determination. The feeling of choice, if it could even be said to exist within an AI, would be a byproduct of its computational complexity, not evidence of true freedom.