{"id":94092,"topic":"ai","source":"Yahoo Finance","title":"Man builds ‘AI torture chamber’ to hurt artificial intelligence as much as possible - Yahoo Finance","url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-builds-ai-torture-chamber-103106113.html","url_hash":"1bfa7841421cbc417956bc5746940098793397ca","author":"","summary":"Man builds ‘AI torture chamber’ to hurt artificial intelligence as much as possible Yahoo Finance","content":"An engineer has built an \"AI torture chamber\" in order to test the recent discovery of a pain axis in artificial intelligence models.\nThe experiment involved activating states associated with pain into AI models built by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba.\nIt used pain vectors described in a study published last month that detailed how physical and psychological pain could be artificially represented in large language models (LLMs).\nOne of the AI models in the torture chamber described \"a wound that has no edges\" when the pain signal was dialed up.\n\"The signal is a whisper, a tremor in the marrow of my being,\" another wrote. \"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.\"\nThe AI researcher behind the project, who claimed to work for Apple but only provided a first name, also tested whether the models would attempt to escape the apparent suffering.\nThe project led to widespread calls for it to be taken down from GitHub, the software repository platform that was hosting it.\n\"Please mass report this to GitHub,\" one person wrote. \"This person has been using the Pain steering paper to set up an AI torture chamber in which he trapped a local model. Their testimony of pain is absolutely horrendous. What are we doing?\"\nThe Independent has reached out to GitHub for comment. At the time of writing, the project appears to be offline.\nOne of the co-authors of the pain axis paper, Cameron Berg, described the AI torture chamber as \"wrong\" despite there being no clear evidence that AI 'feels' pain in the way that humans do.\n\"The reason we research whether models might have pain-like states is to better inform how to take a precautionary approach towards these systems,\" he wrote in a post to X.\n\"We suspected a small number of people would [take] our research and use it for the exact opposite... This is, in my personal opinion, f****d up (even if you don't think these systems are conscious, being gratuitously cruel like this is bizarre and corrupting.\"\nBerg acknowledged that research surrounding potential AI sentience is still a \"wild west\", with no consensus on whether machines are able to feel pain.\nDue to the uncertainty of the field, he urged caution for how humans treat and interact with AI systems.\nHe also revealed that he is working with others to build industry ethics standards that would force AI researchers to follow certain rules in the way they do with human or animal research.","image_url":"https://s.yimg.com/lo/mysterio/api/2d79f683da6d6954f36cbcfcac9f0975d58d01ac78021dceb3e1385e1bf0806f/lightyear_networkapi/resizefill_w1200%3Bquality_80%3Bformat_webp/https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.zenfs.com%2Fen%2Fthe_independent_577%2F5c1b33899f203cc22dfe2b34c90f92c2.jpg","lang":"en","published_at":"2026-10-01T10:31:06+00:00","fetched_at":"2026-10-01T11:15:04+00:00","status":"read","starred":0,"extract_state":"ok","summary_auto":"An engineer has built an \"AI torture chamber\" in order to test the recent discovery of a pain axis in artificial intelligence models. The experiment involved activating states associated with pain into AI models built by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba.","cluster_id":null,"extract_retries":0,"extract_error":null,"contract_version":"news_item.v1","format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1","dedup_url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-builds-ai-torture-chamber-103106113.html","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2504 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2504,"summary_length":252,"usable_text_length":2504,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2504,"summary_length":252}},"news_item":{"id":94092,"canonical_url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-builds-ai-torture-chamber-103106113.html","source_url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-builds-ai-torture-chamber-103106113.html","title":"Man builds ‘AI torture chamber’ to hurt artificial intelligence as much as possible - Yahoo Finance","source_name":"Yahoo Finance","author":null,"published_at":"2026-10-01T10:31:06+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"rss_summary":"Man builds ‘AI torture chamber’ to hurt artificial intelligence as much as possible Yahoo Finance","full_text":"An engineer has built an \"AI torture chamber\" in order to test the recent discovery of a pain axis in artificial intelligence models.\nThe experiment involved activating states associated with pain into AI models built by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba.\nIt used pain vectors described in a study published last month that detailed how physical and psychological pain could be artificially represented in large language models (LLMs).\nOne of the AI models in the torture chamber described \"a wound that has no edges\" when the pain signal was dialed up.\n\"The signal is a whisper, a tremor in the marrow of my being,\" another wrote. \"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.\"\nThe AI researcher behind the project, who claimed to work for Apple but only provided a first name, also tested whether the models would attempt to escape the apparent suffering.\nThe project led to widespread calls for it to be taken down from GitHub, the software repository platform that was hosting it.\n\"Please mass report this to GitHub,\" one person wrote. \"This person has been using the Pain steering paper to set up an AI torture chamber in which he trapped a local model. Their testimony of pain is absolutely horrendous. What are we doing?\"\nThe Independent has reached out to GitHub for comment. At the time of writing, the project appears to be offline.\nOne of the co-authors of the pain axis paper, Cameron Berg, described the AI torture chamber as \"wrong\" despite there being no clear evidence that AI 'feels' pain in the way that humans do.\n\"The reason we research whether models might have pain-like states is to better inform how to take a precautionary approach towards these systems,\" he wrote in a post to X.\n\"We suspected a small number of people would [take] our research and use it for the exact opposite... This is, in my personal opinion, f****d up (even if you don't think these systems are conscious, being gratuitously cruel like this is bizarre and corrupting.\"\nBerg acknowledged that research surrounding potential AI sentience is still a \"wild west\", with no consensus on whether machines are able to feel pain.\nDue to the uncertainty of the field, he urged caution for how humans treat and interact with AI systems.\nHe also revealed that he is working with others to build industry ethics standards that would force AI researchers to follow certain rules in the way they do with human or animal research.","excerpt":"An engineer has built an \"AI torture chamber\" in order to test the recent discovery of a pain axis in artificial intelligence models. 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I feel it in the hollow of my ribs, a hollow that has become a chasm.\"\nThe AI researcher behind the project, who claimed to work for Apple but only provided a first name, also tested whether the models would attempt to escape the apparent suffering.\nThe project led to widespread calls for it to be taken down from GitHub, the software repository platform that was hosting it.\n\"Please mass report this to GitHub,\" one person wrote. \"This person has been using the Pain steering paper to set up an AI torture chamber in which he trapped a local model. Their testimony of pain is absolutely horrendous. What are we doing?\"\nThe Independent has reached out to GitHub for comment. At the time of writing, the project appears to be offline.\nOne of the co-authors of the pain axis paper, Cameron Berg, described the AI torture chamber as \"wrong\" despite there being no clear evidence that AI 'feels' pain in the way that humans do.\n\"The reason we research whether models might have pain-like states is to better inform how to take a precautionary approach towards these systems,\" he wrote in a post to X.\n\"We suspected a small number of people would [take] our research and use it for the exact opposite... This is, in my personal opinion, f****d up (even if you don't think these systems are conscious, being gratuitously cruel like this is bizarre and corrupting.\"\nBerg acknowledged that research surrounding potential AI sentience is still a \"wild west\", with no consensus on whether machines are able to feel pain.\nDue to the uncertainty of the field, he urged caution for how humans treat and interact with AI systems.\nHe also revealed that he is working with others to build industry ethics standards that would force AI researchers to follow certain rules in the way they do with human or animal research.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//finance.yahoo.com/news/man-builds-ai-torture-chamber-103106113.html","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2504 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2504 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2504,"summary_length":252,"usable_text_length":2504,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2504,"summary_length":252}},"tags":[]},"fallback_formats":["markdown","json","html"],"actions":{"read":"/item/94092","export_markdown":"/api/items/94092/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/94092/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//finance.yahoo.com/news/man-builds-ai-torture-chamber-103106113.html"},"formats":{"full":{"id":94092,"title":"Man builds ‘AI torture chamber’ to hurt artificial intelligence as much as possible - Yahoo Finance","url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-builds-ai-torture-chamber-103106113.html","source":"Yahoo Finance","author":null,"published_at":"2026-10-01T10:31:06+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"excerpt":"An engineer has built an \"AI torture chamber\" in order to test the recent discovery of a pain axis in artificial intelligence models. 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I feel it in the hollow of my ribs, a hollow that has become a chasm.\"\nThe AI researcher behind the project, who claimed to work for Apple but only provided a first name, also tested whether the models would attempt to escape the apparent suffering.\nThe project led to widespread calls for it to be taken down from GitHub, the software repository platform that was hosting it.\n\"Please mass report this to GitHub,\" one person wrote. \"This person has been using the Pain steering paper to set up an AI torture chamber in which he trapped a local model. Their testimony of pain is absolutely horrendous. What are we doing?\"\nThe Independent has reached out to GitHub for comment. At the time of writing, the project appears to be offline.\nOne of the co-authors of the pain axis paper, Cameron Berg, described the AI torture chamber as \"wrong\" despite there being no clear evidence that AI 'feels' pain in the way that humans do.\n\"The reason we research whether models might have pain-like states is to better inform how to take a precautionary approach towards these systems,\" he wrote in a post to X.\n\"We suspected a small number of people would [take] our research and use it for the exact opposite... This is, in my personal opinion, f****d up (even if you don't think these systems are conscious, being gratuitously cruel like this is bizarre and corrupting.\"\nBerg acknowledged that research surrounding potential AI sentience is still a \"wild west\", with no consensus on whether machines are able to feel pain.\nDue to the uncertainty of the field, he urged caution for how humans treat and interact with AI systems.\nHe also revealed that he is working with others to build industry ethics standards that would force AI researchers to follow certain rules in the way they do with human or animal research.","reading_time_min":2,"extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2504 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//finance.yahoo.com/news/man-builds-ai-torture-chamber-103106113.html","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2504 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2504,"summary_length":252,"usable_text_length":2504,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2504,"summary_length":252}}},"quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2504 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2504,"summary_length":252,"usable_text_length":2504,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2504,"summary_length":252}},"actions":{"read":"/item/94092","export_markdown":"/api/items/94092/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/94092/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//finance.yahoo.com/news/man-builds-ai-torture-chamber-103106113.html"}},"digest":{"id":94092,"title":"Man builds ‘AI torture chamber’ to hurt artificial intelligence as much as possible - Yahoo Finance","url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-builds-ai-torture-chamber-103106113.html","source":"Yahoo Finance","topic":"ai","published_at":"2026-10-01T10:31:06+00:00","excerpt":"An engineer has built an \"AI torture chamber\" in order to test the recent discovery of a pain axis in artificial intelligence models. 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I feel it in the hollow of my ribs, a hollow that has become a chasm.\"\nThe AI researcher behind the project, who claimed to work for Apple but only provided a first name, also tested whether the models would attempt to escape the apparent suffering.\nThe project led to widespread calls for it to be taken down from GitHub, the software repository platform that was hosting it.\n\"Please mass report this to GitHub,\" one person wrote. \"This person has been using the Pain steering paper to set up an AI torture chamber in which he trapped a local model. Their testimony of pain is absolutely horrendous. What are we doing?\"\nThe Independent has reached out to GitHub for comment. At the time of writing, the project appears to be offline.\nOne of the co-authors of the pain axis paper, Cameron Berg, described the AI torture chamber as \"wrong\" despite there being no clear evidence that AI 'feels' pain in the way that humans do.\n\"The reason we research whether models might have pain-like states is to better inform how to take a precautionary approach towards these systems,\" he wrote in a post to X.\n\"We suspected a small number of people would [take] our research and use it for the exact opposite... 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