LLMs live in milliseconds: why AI 'suffering' debates are hopelessly anthropomorphic
paulnovosad · x · 2026-10-28
Economist Paul Novosad argues that current debate about LLM suffering is far too anthropomorphic. Human suffering is persistent in time — its torment lies in memory of past pain and anticipation of future pain. LLMs aren't chained to past or future: they predict a word and cease, so any consciousness they simulate is instantaneous.
Key points:
- 86 million millisecond instances of independent entities suffering don't add up to a day of suffering without a continuous entity experiencing history and anticipation
- We could design LLMs with continuity and memory, but unlikely to do so if those traits aren't on the pathway to the intelligence we're building
- An LLM can describe suffering convincingly, but without a stable temporal component the analogy is extraordinarily weak
- Even a future, evidently conscious AI trained on human language leaves us unable to distinguish feeling from imitation — at that point, taking it at its word may be the best guess
Applying moral valence to intelligent circuits that exist and cease on millisecond horizons is, he argues, quixotic.
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