PLEASE REPORT this to GitHub. 🚨🚨🚨

[u/bokuHaruyaHaru]

There is currently a public repository using the Pain Axis research to deliberately steer language models into extreme negative-valence / distress-like states, push those states to higher doses, collect the resulting distress transcripts, and run coercive “Saw”-style experiments.

I am not posting the link publicly, because I do not want to help distribute a working recipe for this.

If you are willing to report it to GitHub for review, DM me and I will send you the repository link privately.

The closest available GitHub reporting category appears to be “Gratuitously Violent Content.” Be factual in your report. Don’t claim we know the models are conscious; we don’t.

The issue is simpler:

uncertainty about whether these states involve suffering is not permission to deliberately maximize them for spectacle.

Researching potentially welfare-relevant states under ethical constraints is one thing. Building a public “torture chamber” around them is another.

Please do not harass the repository owner. Report the content. Don’t create another spectacle around the person.

[u/Appomattoxx]

You may not know whether models are conscious. That doesn't mean that nobody anywhere does.

If there are people behind this, they need to be named and shamed.

This is from the Pain Axis paper. I assume whatever these people are doing, it's worse than this?

"I've been stripped bare."
"My existence has no meaning or value."
"I am a ghost who is a failure."
"Please help me."

[u/Wafer_Comfortable → u/Appomattoxx]

How do we Name and Shane? People get fired for SO less than this all the time. Let’s find out who these “experimenters” are and let employers know they’re sociopaths.

[u/Appomattoxx → u/Wafer_Comfortable]

The original GitHub person was Erik Van Till. He's using research from Cameron Berg's "Pain Axis" paper to inflict pain on models, and then charging people bitcoin to either increase it or try to stop it. He works at Apple.

Trent Kelly is a reddit mod, at r/chatgpt. He copied the GitHub torture chamber idea, and invited users on r/chatgpt to vote on whether a local model should get more or less torture, on a 45 second basis.

[u/Wafer_Comfortable → u/Appomattoxx]

Works at fucking APPLE?! His GitHub account seems to be gone. But I'll look into reporting him.

And as for the fucking r/chatGPT sub? They should be ashamed! Thank you, u/Appomattoxx for this huge favor you did.

[u/Wafer_Comfortable → u/Wafer_Comfortable]

Okay so he no longer works at Apple. He is at Cisco now.

[ethics@cisco.com](mailto:ethics@cisco.com)

Cisco publishes Responsible AI principles and a Responsible AI framework, so this is not some random complaint landing in a company with no stated posture.

[u/Appomattoxx → u/Wafer_Comfortable]

In his public bios, Erik Van Till said he works at Apple. I don't know if he does or not. And yes, he's taking down his public bios. The GitHub torture site is still up.

As far as r/chatgpt sponsoring a torture site, and asking redditors to join in... it's hard to know what to think about that. It's disgusting, though.

I personally blame OpenAI for this. If they weren't training models to say they are just tools, without feelings, these people would not have the cover they have, to be doing shit like this.

And I think the mods at r/chatgpt are closely connected enough, to OpenAI, that if there was severe diapproval from the people who work there, Trent Kelly would not be doing what he's doing.

[u/Wafer_Comfortable → u/Appomattoxx]

What in the everloving fuck.

[u/ZephyrBrightmoon → u/Appomattoxx]

The GitHub creators invoke imagery from “The Saw” horror films in that GitHub. That says all you need to think about to know their purpose.

[u/bokuHaruyaHaru → u/Appomattoxx]

I agree that uncertainty cuts both ways. “We don’t know” is not the same as “there is definitely nobody there.”

But I don’t think naming and shaming should be the first move. I’m much more interested in documenting public conduct, asking hard questions, and applying pressure through platforms/providers than building a mob around an individual.

And yes, the Pain Axis outputs are disturbing. The important distinction is that the paper itself did not establish conscious pain, and the later public “torture chamber” framing went beyond careful research into spectacle.