If the code hurts: on pain and virtual brains
AI and Ethics April 27, 2026 Giuseppe Comerci
Highly advanced virtual brains connected in real time to their biological counterparts could theoretically experience psychological pain. The analysis adopts a mixed conception of pain that integrates sensory and affective dimensions, extrapolates two requirements for experiencing pain, and applies them to three virtual brain architectures. The issue warrants renewed attention because past literature treated pain abstractly without a specific theoretical framework, and recent technologies like digital brain twins now link virtual brains to biological brains, raising new ethical questions about moral status, consciousness, and personhood.