[ExI] Do LLMs feel pain?

[Gregory Jones]

BillK, I do hope this AI is telling us the truth.  I think it is, but my
values may influencing my bet, which is bad for business.

spike

On Sun, Sep 27, 2026 at 5:56 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> 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*
>>
> ----------------------------------------------
>
>
> 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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