Consider that humblest of automata: the room thermostat. It has
a sensor (temperature) and an actuator (boiler on/off control)
and some artificial intelligence, to decide whether to switch
the boiler on - if the room is getting cold, or off - if the
room is getting too warm. (If the thermostat has hysteresis the
'on' temperature will be different to the 'off' temperature -
but that's not important here.) I said that the theromstat's AI
'decides' whether to switch the boiler on or off, which implies
that it has free will. Of course it doesn't, because its
artificial intelligence is no more than a simple rule, 'if
temperature <> 60 then switch boiler off', for example. So,
depending on the temperature, what the thermostat decides is
completely determined. With this simple deterministic rule the
thermostat can't simply decide to switch the boiler off
regardless of the temperature just for the hell of it. Well all
of that is true for 99.99..% of the time. But consider the
situation when the temperature is poised