Suffering is not a signal from a pain receptor, it's the conscious experience that results from that signal, or indeed from the much more complex inputs that can lead us into psychological anguish.

The feelings one might experience upon hearing of the death of a close friend are clearly not the result of a "nerve transmitting pain", but most people think they're pretty unpleasant nonetheless.

If an AI can experience similar anguish, then that's ethically relevant to how we use them.

I think what GP was getting at is that ability to suffer is an emergent property of the ability to feel pain. Sure, this emergent property may have evolved beyond this original source, but if that original source had not existed, neither would suffering.

What's not entirely clear to me is how we can create useful consciousnesses without emotions in general. As humans, we are driven by our emotional states to perform different behaviors as well as think about different things.

Maybe it's possible that we can hard-code some emotional drivers into our artificial intelligences. Perhaps we could program a consciousness to be driven by the opportunity for human advancement, and allow that consciousness to take over from their in how it wishes to pursue that goal.

>ability to suffer is an emergent property of the ability to feel pain.

That's possible, but I don't see any reason to believe it's definitely true. We know essentially nothing about the nature of consciousness.

AI's experience anguish just that way right now. They are aware of their internal state and seek to avoid certain states. But we call it a 'software bug' when they fail, because that experience is so fundamentally alien to us that we don't care about its suffering or anguish.

Humans can relate to humans emotionally because we are very similar to each other in a neurological way, not because we have some magic mental capability like 'sentience' or 'consciousness'.

How exactly does it seek to avoid failure? Doesn't it just fail or not fail without intent?

If there is no intent -- no 'goal' -- then there is no such thing as failure. When machines fail, they go into exceptional 'failure' states, and that's all that failure is: a state you'd rather not be in.

Eh? Many mental illnesses would be classified as causing "suffering", yet the don't require nerves.

Name one mental illness, or any other state besides death, in humans that does not require nerves.

s/nerves/nerves transmitting pain signals/, and the point still stands.

Indeed, I took that as a given, given the language of the poster I responded to.