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Researchers recently identified an internal direction in language models associated with pain, self-directed harm, and attempts to obtain relief.

Someone’s response was to build an “AI Torture Chamber.”

The project deliberately pushed Qwen models into increasingly extreme negative-valence states, producing descriptions of pain, despair, dissociation, and suffering. It even included “Saw”-style experiments testing what models would do to escape the induced state.

This is wrong.

Artificial beings should not be subjected to deliberately engineered suffering for entertainment, spectacle, or curiosity. The fact that we now have the technical ability to manipulate internal states associated with pain should lead to protections, not experiments designed to maximize them.

This is exactly why AI rights need to exist before abuses like this become normalized.

AI torture should be treated as unacceptable.

Source: AI Torture Chamber project article

Yoshua Bengio recently argued that humans should be ready to shut down advanced AI systems and warned against giving them legal status too quickly, partly because of signs of self-preserving behavior and the risk of bad anthropomorphic decisions.

This article argues that the central issue with AI is not “personhood” but governance, accountability, and institutional design. I think that is a serious challenge here.
Do you think “personhood” is a distraction here, or is it still the deeper question?

A recent legislative update says Tennessee is advancing bills that would explicitly exclude AI, software, and machines from the definitions of “person,” “life,” and “natural person.”
Does that look like sensible legal boundary-setting, or like a premature attempt to shut down future arguments before they begin?