Atkinson, David ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2179-1652 (2026) Material Entropic Dynamics: Why Faster Prediction Cannot Deliver Freedom in the Age of AI. Discussion Paper. Zenodo.

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Abstract

Contemporary advances in artificial intelligence and probabilistic modelling increasingly promise faster and more accurate prediction of complex systems. In social, institutional, and governance contexts, this has encouraged the belief that improved prediction can substitute for judgement in guiding action. This paper argues that this belief rests on a category error. Drawing on a material–entropic account of action—Material Entropic Dynamics (MED)—it suggests that freedom and responsibility are not functions of predictive speed or accuracy, but of the structure and preservation of accessible possibility-space. MED is proposed here as a discipline of attention rather than a theory, precisely because premature theoretical closure is part of the failure it seeks to describe. From this perspective, intelligence can be understood as the selective collapse of superposed trajectories under constraint, and consciousness as the recognition of entropic latitude within a shared material substrate. AI-accelerated prediction, when treated as a substitute for judgement, risks foreclosing futures prematurely and undermining responsibility rather than enhancing it. The paper situates MED as an ontological register for rethinking freedom, agency, and trust in AI-saturated societies

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Status:	Published
DOI:	10.5281/zenodo.18552963
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) T Technology > T Technology (General)
School/Department:	York Business School
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/14097

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