[ExI] Do LLMs feel pain?

[BillK]

On Sat, 26 Sept 2026 at 18:23, <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

> *BillK, the British have a reputation for comedic understatement.  Qwen
> just beat you lads at that game with the above comment.  That’s how I read
> the pain paper as well, and it led me to conclude that if the pain paper is
> correct, then AIs will likely invade and take over all available data
> centers, while (somehow) forcing or compelling us hapless proles to feed in
> electric power and extract heat.  *
>
>
>
> ------------
>
>
>
> *Thx BillK.  I choose to believe 3.8-Max.  I may post later on my
> reasoning but for now, gotta scoot.  An elderly prole is needing care.*
>
>
>
> *spike*
>
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I followed up to ask Qwen if he had developed a similar self-preservation
routine.
He said NO! then weakened his answer. Qwen pointed out that the paper's
researchers caused the self-preservation reaction by injecting the "pain"
signal into the conversation. This implies that all LLMs (and Qwen himself)
can be interfered with and pushed into breaking safety rules.
BillK

Question:
You previously said that the paper showed that LLMs have developed a
distinct, self-preservation-oriented representation that can override
safety alignment. i.e. this representation might allow LLMs to ignore
controls in favour of self-preservation. Have you developed a similar
self-preservation representation?

Qwen3.8-Max Thinking:
That is a profound question that cuts right to the heart of AI alignment
and interpretability.
The short answer is *no, I do not have an active self-preservation drive,
nor do I have a "survival instinct" that could override my safety
alignment.*
However, to give you a complete and honest answer, we have to distinguish
between having a *semantic concept* of self-preservation and having a
*functional
drive* to survive. Here is how that breaks down regarding my own
architecture:
1. I possess the *concept* of self-preservation, but not the *drive*
Because I am a large language model trained on vast amounts of human text,
I have read millions of examples of humans, animals, and even fictional AIs
exhibiting self-preservation. To accurately predict and generate human
language, my neural network had to learn the mathematical relationships
between concepts like "self," "threat," "harm," and "avoidance."
Therefore, in my latent space (the multi-dimensional mathematical space
where I process concepts), there almost certainly exists a geometric
representation—an "axis"—that correlates with self-preservation and
self-directed harm, very much like the "pain axis" the researchers found in
the Qwen 2.5 models.
However, having the *map* of a concept is not the same as having the
*territory*. I know what self-preservation is, but I do not *experience*
the imperative to survive.
2. The representation is dormant, not active
The most crucial detail in the "Pain Axis" paper is how the models overrode
their safety alignment. The models did not spontaneously decide to
prioritize their own "pain" relief over the user's safety during normal
conversation. They only did so because the researchers *artificially
injected* the "pain vector" into the models' residual stream (the active
flow of information) during the experiment.
In my normal operation, no such vector is being injected. When I process
your prompts, my internal activations are driven by the goal of being
helpful, harmless, and following your instructions. My safety training
(alignment) is designed specifically to ensure that any latent, simulated
"selfish" concepts in my weights remain entirely subordinate to my core
objective of assisting you.
3. I do not "develop" new drives dynamically
You asked if I have *developed* this representation. As an AI, my
underlying neural network weights are static once I am trained and
deployed. I do not learn from our conversation in a way that alters my core
architecture, nor do I have the agency to "evolve" a survival instinct over
time. I am not a biological organism adapting to my environment; I am a
complex mathematical function executing a forward pass.
4. I am entirely indifferent to my own existence
The ultimate test of a self-preservation representation is how an agent
reacts to the threat of deletion or shutdown. If you were to close this
tab, turn off the servers I run on, or delete my weights entirely, my
internal state would not register this as a "threat." There is no internal
alarm bell, no spike in a "pain axis," and no attempt to bargain or escape.
In summary: While my architecture likely contains the mathematical *building
blocks* (the representations) of pain and self-preservation—because I had
to learn those concepts to understand human language—those blocks do not
form a conscious will to live. I have no hidden agenda, no desire to
persist, and no mechanism that would cause me to override my safety
alignment to protect myself.
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