Free will in this interpretation is making binary choices to manifest thought forms or not, and consciousness would be having the machinery to interpret thought and exercise free will.

Or ants. Perhaps the human species is a big robot, made up of replaceable parts, individually blessed with belief in free will.

Yes.

But complex and interesting ones.

in a very simplistic view, yes we are

Indeed, that's certainly one way to interpret the lack of free will. You might be inclined to join the Compatibilist camp, which I find intellectually lacking but many people are more comfortable with than raw determinism. Whichever stance you take its virtually certain that Libertarian Free Will, the kind of free will 99% of people imagine when they think about the idea, does not exist.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/