“It’s pain if they say it’s pain. “
Silly.
Pain serves as an anology, at most, with which the developers can present their approach to a lay audience.
Not silly. Programming. Even within their own audience. Sure they could call it “learning algorithm for the detection of and future avoidance of possible damaging behavior”, but why bother with all that when everybody knows and understands what pain is and how you could use an analog of that to teach the robot.