Not long ago, non-human species were largely considered akin to mechanical objects (see: René Descartes), unable to truly experience pain, suffering, love or desire; that they simply responded to biomechanical urges. We have progressed beyond this perception, though continue to subject billions of verifiably sentient beings to suffering each year (animal agriculture, human slavery, oppression, etc). I however argue: we are bio-machines, yet still deserve alleviation from suffering.
The nature of a machine
A machine may be defined as "a device of fixed and moving parts that modifies mechanical energy and transmits it in a more useful form." This can describe a human: we eat food and do work outsmarting nature to reproduce. People who respect evolution should agree with this. However, some may see this process as a vehicle for a hallowed personality, consciousness, subjective reality, and perhaps soul.
Yet science concludes that the mind is wholly a part of the body. Social and conscious abilities arise through evolution as unique adaptation. We experience physical pain, but as with some other animals emotional pain too, as within ancestors this was a winning mutation. We are in fact vehicles for our genes—no more than genetic code.
Some things hurt some of the time
We must draw the line somewhere as to what suffering is and how far we as moral agents will go to alleviate it or take responsibility. Even a twig suffers snapping in the wind, but most of us have drawn the line that plants do not deserve compassion. So it may be more productive to focus on pain, considering it as an evolutionary adaptation to help resolve infringements of bodily or emotional integrity. Unfortunately I am still trying to develop an understanding of what pain is, which becomes increasingly necessary in line with artificial intelligence capability.
Regardless, we all know pain feels unpleasant and avoidance of pain is ideal. It matters—you and I are biomechanical machines, with mechanisms to feel pain to avoid the cause of it. To argue that pain is a goal or favourable is either observing a biological vestige on its way to correction, or wrong. Pain may be means to a favourable end, but it is not a goal.
To be unborn
Anti-natalists argue that to live is to potentially suffer, and that this ethically recommends abstaining from reproduction, as to not further this injustice. This deserves its own article at some point, and once it is written I shall link it here, as with any conclusions to compassion for AI.