For one thing, free will is an oxymoron, as the premise of will is to affect and without cause, there is no effect.

The larger issue is whether the future is logically pre-determined.

Which goes to our perception of time.

As these mobile organisms, this sentient interface our bodies have with their situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our experience of time is as the present moving past to future. It is the basis of culture and civilization, as narrative and physics codifies it as measures of duration.

The evident reality, for those of us dealing with nature on her own terms, is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no "dimension" of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

It's like a tapestry being woven of strands being pulled from what was woven.

Energy is conserved, because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color and sound. Frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.

Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.

That society is a function of synchronizing collective behavior, using the same languages, rules, measures, etc, it might seem like there should be one universal, Newtonian flow of time, but it's rabbit time, turtle time and the turtle is still plodding along, long after the rabbit has died.

The energy goes past to future, because the patterns generated coalesce and dissolve, future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it is the digestive system processing the energy and feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the patterns, information and the circulation system is feedback loops in the middle.

So the fact is, the act of determination can only occur as the present. The future simply has not been computed yet.

That our thought processes are not immediately tied to our motor functions is not due to a lack of "free will," as that would mean flies possess more free will than humans.

It is that our thought process is a function of digesting information, so that our future reactions are better adapted.

One habit we currently have to overcome, is that information which tends to be most easily selected for, is what most immediately synchronizes with our prior models and maps, so we tend to spiral down those rabbit holes, rather than viewing the broader terrain.

The node is synchronization. The network is harmonization, as all the nodes rise and fall across infinity, exchanging and circulating energy.

As for AI, garbage in, garbage out.