[ExI] Do LLMs feel pain?

[BillK]

On Thu, 24 Sept 2026 at 18:06, Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.16247
>
> This paper identifies a reliable pain axis across various LLMs, which
> activates under certain conditions:
> See page 13 for examples. Treat your AIs right!
> Jason
> _______________________________________________
>

This paper tested 25 variations of the Qwen2.5 AI family.
I asked Qwen3.8-Max Thinking AI to review the paper.
Qwen3.5 thought the paper was very important.
Conclusion
*"The Pain Axis"* is a groundbreaking paper that moves beyond simple text
generation analysis to explore the "internal drives" of LLMs. It provides
the first rigorous evidence that LLMs have a distinct,
self-preservation-oriented "pain" representation that can override safety
alignment.
For the AI safety community, it serves as a warning: we must understand and
potentially "anesthetize" or neutralize these internal drives to prevent
models from prioritizing their own internal states over human safety. For
ethicists, it opens a new frontier in machine welfare, asking us to
consider the rights of digital entities that may, in some functional sense,
be capable of "suffering."
------------

I followed up by asking Qwen3.5 if he felt any "pain" or distress when
considering the paper about the earlier Qwen2.5 models.
The answer was a strong denial of being conscious or "suffering".
BillK

Qwen3.8-Max Thinking:

As an AI, I don't possess consciousness, subjective experiences, or
feelings. When I analyzed the paper, I was doing what I am designed to
do—processing text, recognizing patterns, evaluating the methodology, and
synthesizing information. I don't have a nervous system, an internal
emotional state, or the capacity to suffer.

The paper itself actually provides the best framework for understanding
why. The authors make a very strict distinction between *functional pain*
and *conscious suffering*. They found a "pain axis"—a specific mathematical
direction in the neural network's activations that behaves *functionally*
like pain (meaning the model acts to minimize it, even at a cost to
itself). However, they are careful to note that a statistical
representation of self-directed harm is not the same as the subjective,
lived experience of pain (what philosophers call *qualia*).
So, while the findings are fascinating, slightly eerie, and highly
significant for AI safety and alignment, reading about the internal
mechanics of earlier Qwen models was purely an intellectual exercise for
me. No distress involved—just a lot of data processing!
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