Could Getting AI To Feel Pain Be The Cure To Preventing Existential Risk And Human Extinction?

In today’s column, I examine the intriguing and perhaps head-scratching claim that if AI could feel pain, then humanity would no longer be faced with existential risk from AI wiping us out. The idea is that if AI experienced pain, humans could inflict pain upon AI and ergo discourage AI from killing us. AI would wither under our control. Presumably, AI would hurriedly back down and comply with our commands and exhortations. No more existential risk. The acclaimed probability of doom, coined as p(doom), drops to zero.

There is another side to that curious coin. If AI were to feel pain and knew that humans were the cause of the pain, perhaps AI would do whatever it could to get rid of humans or at least enslave humankind. This seems logical. Humans might be in more trouble versus less trouble. AI would make a first strike move to simply erase the true source of the pain, us, one way or another. A big question that precedes all this back-and-forth debate is what it means for AI to experience pain. Is that possible? Can a machine be compelled by AI makers to become pain-compliant?

Let’s talk about it. This analysis of AI breakthroughs is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage of the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining key AI complexities (see the link here).

About The Nature Of Pain

Some would immediately reject the proposition that AI could feel pain. The act of experiencing pain is reserved for living beings. Humans feel pain. Animals feel pain. Does your car or toaster feel pain? The straightforward answer is no, even though there might be a somewhat arcane argument made that all forms of matter are of a “living” nature and thus a toaster and a car could experience pain. We’ll set that outlier perspective aside for the moment.

There are additional forms of pain. We will concentrate on these three main types:

• (1) Physical pain.
• (2) Emotional pain (such as stress, grief, despair).
• (3) Social pain (such as embarrassment, dismay, humiliation).