Sadistic Scientists Build a Robot That Can Feel Pain So That They Can Hurt It

The field of artificial intelligence is fertile ground for philosophical debates about the nature of consciousness. Is it even possible for a robot to possess true consciousness? If it is possible, how can you prove that a specific robot is conscious? Can you even prove that your own children, or anyone else, are actually conscious? Nobody can agree on the answers to those questions, but most of us can agree that a sense of self-preservation seems to be a prerequisite for consciousness. A team of scientists from Osaka University in Japan have recently built a robot that can feel pain, and the research may help robots feel empathy in the future.

That robot is named Affetto, and it has actually been around for several years now. It was originally a hairless animatronic robot that superficially resembled a little boy, and that was capable of displaying rudimentary facial expressions. Over its life, Affetto has been upgraded many times. It now wears a wig of realistic hair and has more advanced actuators that act as facial muscles. It would be folly to call Affetto “lifelike,” as it looks more like a serial killer wearing someone else’s face as a mask than a real boy. But it is able to show facial expressions that are at least recognizable.

Affetto’s newest upgrade, and the one that is putting the robot in the headlines, is special synthetic skin that is capable of detecting electric shocks. Those shocks are meant to simulate pain, and Affetto can respond to the shocks with a pained expression. Affetto wasn’t given this new ability purely for the scientists’ own sadistic amusement, but rather to help it empathize with humans. As robots become more common, they’ll need to be able to understand how we work. That includes how we respond to pain. You don’t have to punch your friend in the face to know that will hurt them and they’ll be upset, because you’ve likely experienced similar pain before. The scientists hope that giving robots the ability to feel pain will allow them to empathize in the same way, and that will help us live together harmoniously.

It’s also possible for a robot to want to avoid that pain, giving it a sense of self-preservation. As it stands, robots can be programmed to avoid damaging themselves. But that isn’t really equivalent to our own innate fear of pain. A true need to avoid pain could cause robots to be as inherently cautious as humans and other animals are. Affetto’s ability to feel pain is, however, unquestionably disconcerting.