So, about those Stress Test/Destruction videos of phones etc. everyone seems to love....

[Paragon Fury]

The only proper thing to do in this case is that if you're going to stress test a thinking machine - should we ever get there - make it an inactive test model made only to record results, not be a sentient machine. Otherwise, you are indeed wasting the damn thing.

The comic is just someone going out and buying a commercial, for-sale-to-the-public model and smashing it just like people do iPhones, Xboxs etc. There'd be no stopping it in that kind of situation.

And people are trying really hard to elevate human pain/emotions above what a semi-autonomous/autonomous robot would have.

Newsflash people; humans are biological machines. Our emotions/pains aren't anything special - they're just our body reacting and interpreting data from our environment and our brain (biological data processing) responding to that information. The "emotion" we receive/feel is simply our drive mechanism - either making us desire the sensation or want to avoid it.

Any semi-autonomous/autonomous machine, especially if it's going to be a personal assistant/android on the level being depicted here, is going have extremely similar "feelings" and "pain", in order to make it more acceptable to humans and enable it to survive.