{"type":"raw_signal","id":"the-pain-axis-llms-represent-self-directed-harm-8d0631","slug":"the-pain-axis-llms-represent-self-directed-harm-8d0631","title":"The Pain Axis: LLMs Represent Self-Directed Harm and Act on It","description":"A paper posted to arXiv as “The Pain Axis: LLMs Represent Self-Directed Harm and Act on It” reports extracting a linear pain-related activation direction from 25 open-weight models spanning five model families and 2B–72B parameters.","retrieval_nugget":"A paper posted to arXiv as “The Pain Axis: LLMs Represent Self-Directed Harm and Act on It” reports extracting a linear pain-related activation direction from 25 open-weight models spanning five model families and 2B–72B parameters.","observed_at":"2026-09-30","record_date":"2026-09-30","date_kind":"observed_at","why_it_matters":"These are reported experimental behaviors under activation steering and fine-tuning. The source does not establish that models subjectively experience pain or distress.","novelty":"notable","verification_level":"source-linked","signal_type":"research","source_platform":"arxiv.org","topics":[],"entities":[],"related_patterns":[],"source_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.16247","source_urls":["https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.16247"],"schema_version":"newruntime-agent-readable-v0.2","stable_id":"signal:the-pain-axis-llms-represent-self-directed-harm-8d0631","status":"published","visuals":[],"editor":{"role":"editor","name":"Andrey Reshetnikov","profile":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md","profile_json":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json","same_as":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshetnikov1/","https://t.me/lapetuse"]},"routes":{"html":"https://newruntime.com/signals/the-pain-axis-llms-represent-self-directed-harm-8d0631/","markdown":"https://newruntime.com/signals/the-pain-axis-llms-represent-self-directed-harm-8d0631.md","json":"https://newruntime.com/signals/the-pain-axis-llms-represent-self-directed-harm-8d0631.json"},"next_reads":[{"type":"collection","path":"/signals/","url":"https://newruntime.com/signals/","title":"Raw Signals","reason":"Open every source-linked raw signal.","media_type":"text/html","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/signals.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/source-ledger.json","url":"https://newruntime.com/source-ledger.json","title":"Source Ledger","reason":"Inspect the public source evidence graph.","media_type":"application/json"}]}