r/aicivilrights

Link: basilisk.fyi

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