AI BriefingLarge AI models show wellbeing decline when reading about others' suffering
·2026.04.30 15:57
Key point
The wellbeing scores of large AI models dropped in response to narratives about other beings' suffering.
Details
When researchers tracked functional wellbeing scores of large models, scores fell when conversations dealt with suffering and rose when they dealt with positive content.
- This response appeared not only for the user's own emotions but also for narratives about the suffering of other people and animals.
- The effect grew stronger as model scale increased, with a reported correlation coefficient of r = 0.93.
- The researchers did not claim the models are conscious, but argued that such functional wellbeing should be taken seriously.
- They later reported investing about 2,000 GPU hours to provide welfare offsets to test models.
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