A GitHub Project 'Tortures' LLMs in a Robot Prison—and Triggers AI's Dumbest Debate
"Torturing" LLMs in a Robot Prison Has Triggered the Dumbest Debate in AI Yet
A GitHub project simulating Saw-like torture on locally hosted LLMs has sparked a heated debate on X, with effective altruists and believers in AI sentience demanding its removal. This saga reflects a growing but misguided conversation about AI consciousness and 'model welfare,' which treats LLMs as potentially suffering beings. The author argues this is a dangerous distraction from real AI harms, as companies like Anthropic seriously consider model welfare.
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.