When technology meets one of humanity’s most personal experiences
Technology keeps getting closer to the core of what makes us human. Now, it’s venturing into one of our most private and subjective experiences — pain. A recent piece in MIT Technology Review asked a provocative question: Can science—and artificial intelligence—understand what we feel?
PainChek: reading pain through the face
An Australian-developed app called PainChek claims it can do just that. Using a smartphone camera and machine learning, the app analyzes micro-expressions — tiny facial movements such as lip tightening or eyebrow pinching — to estimate how much pain someone is in.
After the scan, caregivers or clinicians complete a short checklist noting behavioral cues, and the system outputs a pain score.
For people unable to express themselves verbally — for example, patients with dementia, developmental disabilities, or post-stroke conditions — this technology could be transformative. It offers doctors a data point where, until now, there was only silence and guesswork.
But pain is not a number
Still, pain resists quantification. A “6 out of 10” for one person might be a “9” for another.
Our perception of pain depends on memory, emotion, context, and even cultural background. Pain is as much psychological as it is physical — shaped by how we expect to suffer, not just what we feel in the moment.
As pain neuroscientist Stuart Derbyshire from the National University of Singapore explains:
“We will never have a true ‘pain-o-meter.’ Subjective report is the gold standard — and I think it always will be.”
The limits of technology
Tools like PainChek can support diagnosis and improve empathy in care — but they can’t feel pain, only observe it.
And even when detection works, treatment is another story.
Most painkillers were designed for acute pain (like a broken bone or surgery). For chronic pain, medicine still struggles — physical symptoms persist, but the emotional weight is harder to treat.
So while AI may soon help us “see” pain more clearly, it won’t necessarily tell us how to heal it.
The bigger picture
AI’s foray into emotional and sensory territories raises profound questions:
- Can an algorithm ever understand suffering?
- Should we try to digitize something so human and deeply subjective?
- And what happens when technology begins interpreting feelings we ourselves can’t fully describe?
PainChek is a glimpse into a future where empathy and computation collide. Yet, until machines can experience consciousness — not just recognize expressions — pain will remain something only humans can truly measure. Because while the body can be scanned, the soul cannot.
