Software can do a lot of things that rocks can’t do, that’s not a good analogy.

Whether software can feel “pain” depends a lot on your definitions, but I think there are circumstances in which software can be said to feel pain. Simple worms can sense painful stimuli and react to it, a program can do the same thing.

We’ve reached the point where the simplistic prejudices about artificial intelligence common in science fiction are no longer useful guidelines for talking about real artificial intelligence. Sci-fi writers have long assumed that AIs couldn’t create art and now it turns out it’s one of the things they’re actually rather good at.