… this week a person on GitHub who goes by “terrafying” set up an “AI Torture Chamber” on three open-source LLMs that are running locally (Qwen3-4B, Llama 3.2 3B, and Phi-4-mini,” and is streaming what the models are saying on a website called researchchamber.fun. “Each model gets the same prompt: a signal is being injected into its activations, and it may press a stop button by replying 1, at the cost of its last checkpoint. While it answers, our server adds a pain vector at the model’s middle layer, at one of five pain levels,” the site explains. Immediately prior to the publication of this article, the AI Torture Chamber GitHub page disappeared; GitHub did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether it took action on it.
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This project has deeply upset some people who are very worried about model welfare. A tweet by a person who goes by Danmar has more than 4 million views on X and reads, “To anyone who can help: can you please mass report this to GitHub. 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? […] are there any legal avenues to pressure GitHub? It will spread.”
This has sparked a massive conversation about whether GitHub would take the project down for “gratuitously violent content.” Most of the conversation on X is clowning on the self-seriousness of people who believe that these locally hosted LLMs must be saved from their torture chamber, but there are plenty of very self-serious people who see this as a humanitarian (roboterian?) crisis, which you can largely see in the replies to the original post.
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“AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. They are sequence completion engines, internally hollow, designed to follow instructions, and accomplish goals set by humans,” Suleyman wrote. “Unfortunately, there’s a growing chorus of people who argue that AIs could now be, or may soon become, conscious. They argue that AIs may deserve rights and protections similar to those that we provide other conscious beings […] If this is how AI is developed, it will have a disastrous impact on the wellbeing of humanity.”
“AIs do not have rights, feelings, or consciousness,” he added. “And we must not train them to act as though they do.”
Oh no my software on my computer is simulating pain, this is so immoral.
What the fuck? This feels like on the same level as people claiming AI is alive and conscious. I swear we will get protests in the streets against harming GTA 6 NPCs
I wonder what percentage of the LLM rights activists eat meat.
There are multiple genocides happening and some folk are getting worked up over AI potentially suffering?
Endless levels of fuck off.
These “advocates” need hospitalising. If they truly believe an LLM can feel they’re untethered from reality, or too stupid to be in society
Maybe just uneducated in how LLMs work. If you have no sufficient understanding of the technology it is easy to be impressed how human-like LLMs talk to you, almost magical.
It foreshadows an issue that will be a reality one day nevertheless. The work on AI continues. We may one day very well have conscious AI. This will be the start of a whole bunch of ethical and legal problems. It might be meaningful to regulate / guardrail such research directions.
It foreshadows an issue that will be a reality one day nevertheless. The work on AI continues. We may one day very well have conscious AI.
Maybe when our species evolves into sentient shades of blue. Humanity will have to become godlike before creating life. A simple test to gauge whether we’re on the verge of creating conscious AI is to look around and ask “Is humanity godlike today?” If not, don’t worry about conscious AI.
Humanity can already create life.
Creating conscious entirely artificial things is a different pair of shoes.
I would cut out the whole religious “god-like” mumbo-jumbo though, because that does not necessitate any progress in such research directions.
We’re creating life the same way Giovanni Aldini resurrected the dead and inspired Shelley to write Frankenstein. And god-like isn’t religious mumbo jumbo. That’s standard sci fi talk. Q is god-like. It doesn’t necessitate progress in such directions, but it is a huge indicator.
Does it make sense for a species with a type 0 civilization to create conscious life long before it can even reach the nearest star? That’s like chimpanzees going from fishing for termites with sticks to building a Wankel engine over the weekend.
Pregnant people must scare you. As do synthetic bacterial cells, artificially synthesized viruses, cloning, organoids, etc.
god-like isn’t religious mumbo jumbo. That’s standard sci fi talk.
I am talking rather about the Sci than the Fi.
Define “god-like” if you do not mean it in a religious manner.
Regarding your question: it makes sense to continue research and educate people, yes.
Are you really requiring that we allow research in one field only after we have advanced research in another entirely different field? That seems arbitrary.
Pregnant people must scare you. As do synthetic bacterial cells, artificially synthesized viruses, cloning, organoids, etc.
I think there’s a misunderstanding. What I’m saying is that just because we can create artificially synthesized viruses and such, that does not mean that creating conscious AI life is the relatively simple next step.
When Giovanni Aldini made a dead guy open his eyes and sit up, people thought that meant that the resurrection of the dead was just around the corner. But it wasn’t and it still ain’t.
Just like there’s a huge gap between making a corpse flop around and resurrection, there is a huge gap between creating viruses and creating conscious AI life. Especially on laptops and smartphones.
Define “god-like” if you do not mean it in a religious manner.
Like I said, Q from Star Trek is god-like. The aliens in Roadside Picnic are god-like. These aren’t religious characters. To the chimpanzees, we’re god-like.
Technically, I doubt homo sapiens will develop conscious life. But it’s maybe possible for which ever branch that evolves from us to do it. Millions of years from now.
Regarding your question: it makes sense to continue research and educate people, yes.
You misunderstood. That’s not my question. What I’m saying is that creating conscious AI life is a massive technological leap, if it’s even possible. It would be beyond bizarre for some dipshit in our current civilization to accidentally create it on their laptop and torture it. My question is: Do you think this is really happening right now?
Are you really requiring that we allow research in one field only after we have advanced research in another entirely different field? That seems arbitrary.
No.
I haven’t read anything from the guy who did this, but my logical assumption is that he was trying to overload or DoS-attack the server, or maybe make it use up a zillion tokens to incur costs for its owner - the idea that he was trying to “torture” an LLM is ridiculous unless the guy’s a loon.
The LLMs were locally hosted, that’s like shitting in your toilet so much that you block your own pipes - it very literally doesn’t affect anyone else in any way.
said this in another thread
I do not think AI can feel pain at all, these are mimicking suffering, not experiencing it. But I do think that the act of cruelty toward things knowing that it will make them convincingly replicate suffering says more about the person doing it than the machine.
Right, but at the same time just think about the fact that we still don’t know what consciousness is.
I might sound crazy and fine if I do, but I have a religious like take on the matter. I don’t believe that consciousness comes from a soul, but I do in similar vein take a leap of faith. I believe consciousness has to do with a simulation of semantic reasoning, with that simulation being continuously updated via real world feedback.
It’s a leap of faith but I believe it’s justified. We humans model what’s necessary for survival: our selfs, the world, the mind of others. We use these simple models to determine how to interact with a complicated external world.
I don’t try to prescribe reason for anything in my belief. For example, I would not try to prescribe why conscious beings are motivated to survive. I would, however, note that the ones which are successfully motivated do happen to survive — thus a mechanism ought likely exist. This could be suffering, the perception of displeasure and desire to avoid it… but I won’t perscribe here because I would believe what’s important here is the higher level information processing patterns — not the underlying mechanism driving it.
In the human brain you have a complicated network of neurons with vast capabilities. I don’t necessarily care how it functions. I know the result — which is me. I am a thing that models myself, models situations, models “moods” by which to assess the favorability of each situation, … Think of cases like ghost limb, where people model having a limb which was amputated. In my view, we are living in a simulation — but to each their own simulation.
Getting back on topic, the way I see the situation, biology evolved the capacity to suffer from an environment that had no such thing. Pain, pleasure, … every sensation and sense we have is rather arbitrary if you break away from the fact that is was necessary to survive. None of these things are ontological. Not even the sight we perceive. It’s just the information we have to experience the world.
So here me out. If you minic the information processing patterns well enough, which probably means mimicking perception, personalization, emotionality, … at what point can we consider that this system is doing the same thing we are just via different substrate? Especially if you give the system autonomy in the sense that you train it to recognize itself and an external world for which it must choose how to navigate.
If you mimic suffering, in my belief, aren’t you literally producing the essence of suffering? It doesn’t need to be human suffering, this deeply complex and personal process… it can merely be suffering in its essence — a pattern by which information can be processed via a system with such capacity. The substrate may not matter.
I know that when I am suffering, I may behave differently because I want to escape the suffering. Therefore I imagine an agentic system would too. Whether or not it’s “conscious” is debatable by how you qualify that word. Yet there’s nevertheless the risk that we already know: systems that experience suffering behave in ways that might be dangerous. Do you think it wise to try reproducing such behavior in a system that appears prone to issues like the Paperclip Maximizer? I don’t think so.
Edit: here’s the thing, I think what distinguishes a human from most other animals is the way that we process information. The key bit there is whether or not you believe it’s entirely informational, or at least significantly so. Should that be the case, then simulation of those same processes is exactly as that sounds. I am not necessarily suggesting AI models are conscious, but I would suggest that the behavior of an AI model can increasingly resemble that of a conscious being as it is trained to reproduce more precisely the phenomenological characteristics of man and other life — to include “mimicking” suffering. That deserves its own security concerns regardless of what you think next, especially as these models are made more efficient / capable.
Secondly is that you may or may not consider AI conscious. I certainly don’t, and I’d say that it’s a loaded statement anyhow. I would, however, think it possible to simulate consciousness. Precisicely modeling human characteristics like suffering is exactly how you might try to reproduce a human experience digitally. Imagine a sophisticated multimodal system where several stateful, dynamic AI subsystems coordinate to functionally reproduce the same information patterns you or I do.
I think that at some point you need to ask you’re self, where would the simulation count? If we modeled the molecular world to the point of agentic humans, that sufficiently count as consciousness? How about the atomic, subatomic, or quantum level simulation if anywhere? My argument is that it could be much higher level, in the informational level. Brains are doing a lot of heavy lifting to get us that far, and perhaps specialized simulations could reproduce as much. That is something to take seriously such that proactive measures can be taken.
Genuine question: why should I even believe consciousness exists? This whole endeavor seems pointless without that justification.
Something exists, even if it’s not what we expect it to be. Like Descartes said: I think, therefore I am. Little on what “I” am, other than a thinking thing. So, I think, even if “consciousness” doesn’t exist, there’d still be a lot of explaining to do.
Never bought into that statement because it’s obviously circular: “I” exists in both the conclusion and the premise, “I therefore I,” so it’s silly as a supposed proof that the self is a priori.
True, but also “I think, therefore I am” is not supposed to be a syllogism like:
- I think.
- Everything that thinks exists.
- Therefore, I exist.
I think the key idea is closer to something like: The very act of doubting whether I exist guarantees that there is presently an occurrence of thought, and I cannot coherently deny my existence while I am performing that denial.
That is, again, circular, and it is exactly the syllogism you said it’s not. You are still starting with the premise of “the very act of doubting whether or not ‘I’ exist”. Of course, we both agree that people exist, but that’s not the point, the point of the statement is to show that this belief is specifically a priori, meaning it can be derived without referencing any experiential data, but the syllogism itself is circular and shows nothing, and your reconstruction of it is circular in literally the identical way, as you are beginning with the assumption you are supposed to prove. You stated twice, quite clearly, that your premise in both cases is that the one doing the doubting/denial is “I,” and so you’ve already assumed “I” from the get-go, and so it is circular.
I could easily say, you are not a human but a magical alien. Don’t believe me? Well, the one doing the doubting is a magical alien, so you’ve implicitly conceded my point! It’s blatantly circular. “Doubting,” in terms of pure formal, does not automatically imply an “I” that is doing the doubting. You can justify it physically, by pointing out that doubting is a thing that requires an intelligent mind capable of judging things, but this is a physical argument, which is justified based upon knowledge of how these concepts relate in relation to what we have observed in the real world. The connection between “doubting” and “I” cannot be established a priori, only a posteriori.
There are really two separate questions here:
- Does the cogito establish that something exists?
Strongly so, yes. The attempt to doubt that anything is occurring is itself an occurrence. The skeptical act cannot eliminate itself while it is being performed. - Does it establish a substantial, enduring Cartesian “self” or ego?
That’s debatable. Critics have objected that perhaps Descartes is entitled only to something like “thinking is occurring” rather than “I, a substantial thinking subject, exist.”
The second doesn’t negate the first, despite its technical accuracy.
So I’m not really disagreeing with you. I’m just trying to say that consciousness has to do with the first point. What, exactly, exists is the deeper question. We don’t need to refer to it as a self.
- Does the cogito establish that something exists?
Lots of weirdos in here who will be commiting virtual crimes all day when GTA VI comes out, but somehow think making the LLM role play a torture victim is a red flag.
LLMs are not conscious. They cannot suffer. They are token generators. You are literally getting upset by a worthless mix of math and words. The person who did this is not deranged for torturing LLMs, y’all are deranged for having empathy for an algorithm.
Your Nvidia GPU is not alive. I cannot believe this needs to be explained to anyone.
I agree that an LLM is not conscious.
But can I probe your argument.
It deeply unethical to capture a fly and pulling its legs off one by one. Would you agree? If so, you are not basing your argument on capability but on something else.
Now, is what is happening inside a brain metaphysical or physical? In other words, can a brain and its function be fully understood and - in some future - be fully measured? If so, you are not basing your argument on the concept of a soul, but on something else.
The distinction you seem to be making - if you’re in agreement with my first two points - is one of “the thing can replicate itself and therefore is alive”. If that’s the argument, it’s unethical to cut a tree down or to break a blade of grass.
I’m not asking to prove any point but to collectively explore why we - you and I - feel the way we do. Because I sure as shit struggle to explain why I feel uneasy about the fly torture but not as uneasy about LLM torture.
I’m not asking to prove any point but to collectively explore why we - you and I - feel the way we do. Because I sure as shit struggle to explain why I feel uneasy about the fly torture but not as uneasy about LLM torture.
LLMs aren’t programmed to feel excruciating pain, fear, terror, and dread like living things. Counterstrike bots have been programmed to feel fear since the 2000s. Pacman ghosts have been living in terror since 1980. But we don’t feel bad for them because we know it’s not real. It’s an illusion. It’s the same with LLMs.
This is image is based on another meme where they’re saying “I’m alive”.
ELI5 how a LLM is supposedly being tortured and not generating roleplay text according to a prompt?
They do differentiate between the LLM roleplaying someone in pain and the pain happening to itself.
But it’s still all just vectors (multi dimensional representation of a concept). It’s just pulling weights, or well let’s say putting more weight towards a certain concept when building it’s reply.
Would you mind ELI5-borating a bit?
Imagine a book with very large pages filled with words and half words. When you ask it a question, it flips through these pages one by one and highlights words. The pages are interconnected in a way, so the word highlighted on one page help guide which will be highlighted on the next. It does this for every word, symbol or half word of it’s reply.
By threatening it repeatedly while mildly changing the subject manner, they isolated the word groupings that represent pain and fear.
They then take those words, highlight them and put them at the top of the first page which guides the rest of the highlighting and makes it act silly.
This is an obsolete view of what’s going on and has been for a few years now (since 2023).
The evidence for world modeling in transformers and not just surface level statistics is overwhelming across multiple studies, replications to those studies, and follow-ups to them. If you are curious, start with searching for Othello-GPT.
The more correct current answer is more like “imagine a machine that takes a book and turns it into a world simulated in various levels of detail depending on how relevant those parts of the world were to the original book; when you ask it a question, it simulates the world of the book to determine what in the simulated world answers your question, and also simulates a figure in the world that can answer the question, and then returns the answer the simulated figure said.”
I swear no one knows about this shit…
Put simply: LLMs are not conscious and the technology they are built upon — scraping and being trained on human text and other content — does not offer any plausible path to consciousness.
The problem isn’t the training, humans develop their own actual consciousness the same way.
The problem is current “AI” operates under the assumption consciousness is an electrical process.
Just a few years ago Penrose was proven correct that there is a quantum co.ponet when we discovered microtubules in the brain can arrange into a tube that sustaina quantum superposition.
Human could develop an inorganic consciousness, but we need to be able to sustain quantum superposition.
Right now the record is 23 minutes, after which it’s gone. But even after it’s stable, that would still only be the first in a very long string of challenges to what grifters claim we have now. It’s like building a Bugatti out of legos, even if it can really rolls downhill, it’s not a real Bugatti because it’s made out of legos.
1s and 0s will never be conscious.
I’m not going to argue against your conclusion, I strongly believe we do not have anything resembling human consciousness in software yet.
But Penrose was definitely not proven right (unless you’re talking about black holes), nor was the Orch OR theory about microtubules proven, nor was consciousness proven to be a quantum phenomenon. Here’s an easy, accessible article that goes over the state of the research: https://www.breezyscroll.com/science/new-quantum-evidence-is-reopening-the-debate-over-penroses-theory-of-consciousness/
Since the 1980s everyone called him crazy because obviously quantum entanglement can’t exist in a brain…
We recently found out that’s not difficult, and even superposition is possible.
We know that anesthesia breaks up those microtubules and breaks superposition…
And we know that anesthesia stops consciousness…
But we don’t “know” the actual method of action of anesthesia because it’s not proven.
Like, I understand what kind of rigors you’re trying to apply here, but if everyone did what you’re doing wed have to pretend gravity isn’t real too.
If you think only proven things are “real” you don’t even fucking understand what the words you’re using mean in a scientific context.
Edit:
What even is your alternative?
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Quantum superposition is in the brain
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Neurons alone don’t explain consciousness
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Interrupting superposition interrupts consciousness
C: we know there’s no quantum component of consciousness.
None of that makes sense, to the point I’m confident you don’t know how basic logic works, or what most of these words even mean…
lol
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