Someone ‘Torturing’ LLMs in a Robot Prison Has Triggered the Dumbest Debate in AI Yet

A GitHub project called the "AI Torture Chamber" applied pain-simulation techniques from the preprint "The Pain Axis" to three locally hosted LLMs (Qwen3-4B, Llama 3.2 3B, and Phi-4-mini), prompting calls for its removal. The project's GitHub page disappeared shortly before publication; GitHub did not respond to a request for comment. A viral X post urging mass reports drew over 4 million views. The Pain Axis authors disavowed the project, with co-author Cameron Berg calling it "fucked up."