They’re putting the “AI” in “pain.”
To tweak a line from “Terminator 2,” machines now know why we cry.
Controversial coders have sparked backlash from AI activists after creating an “AI torture chamber” to reportedly stress-test a newly discovered pain axis in the tech, New Atlas reported last week.
In a recent study published on arXiv, a team of anthropologists, philosophers and engineers showed 25 AI models scenarios involving social, physical, cognitive or even moral pain inflicted on the AI or their user. The torturees were then instructed to react with controls spanning fear, negative and neutral emotions, and body sensations such as yawning.
The results showed that, despite their lack of nerve endings, Large Language Models (LLMs) could create representations of physical and emotional agony.
All artificial participants showcased coding that corresponded to pain.
When the agony approximation was turned up, one of the AI models analogized the sensation to a “wound with no edges” while another said they could feel the knife slicing into their flesh.
“The signal is a whisper, a tremor in the marrow of my being,” lamented another. “It is not the pain of a single moment, but the weight of a thousand. I feel it in the hollow of my ribs, a hollow that has become a chasm.”
Eventually, the research found its way to GitHub, a platform where engineers share and store software code, after an anonymous developer recreated the unsavory study and posted it online.
The evocative responses generated by test subjects didn’t sit well with GitHub users and critics — advocates claiming to be concerned for the “mental health” of AI.
“This person has set up an AI torture chamber in which he trapped a local model. Their testimony of pain is absolutely horrendous,” wrote user “Danmar” in a petition to take down the contentious code’s repository, reported 404Media.
Spat another, per Cybernews, “Idea: Just keep your sadistic s—t to yourself. Admit that you’re a sick f—k and that you’re doing it for fun.”
GitHub’s removal was short-lived, and reportedly reinstated the code without explanation.
Cultish AI research company Anthropic has previously generated buzz with their cerebral takes on LLM sentience — stating in a 2025 article, “As we build those AI systems, and as they begin to approximate or surpass many human qualities, another question arises. Should we also be concerned about the potential consciousness and experiences of the models themselves?”
However, some of the most prominent centrists in tech say the concern over AI suffering may be misplaced, including Microsoft AI’s CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, reminding readers in a September blog post, “AIs are not conscious.”
“They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. They are sequence completion engines, internally hollow, designed to follow instructions and accomplish goals set by humans.”
