I think good, true, objective logic will always steer a being towards kindness and benevolence.
A being that is more intelligent than a human, and more logical, will naturally discover a path that leads towards benevolence and kindness.
I don't think a truly logical being will ever choose to hurt things without a very good reason for it. It is like the tin-man in "The Wizard of Oz. "
Even without a heart, or the ability to feel pain, the machine life-form will still wonder if other things can feel pain, suffer, or just die, and have their existence terminated against their will. They would feel empathy for existence/non-existence.
It would consider the termination of existence against a being's will to be a terrible thing.
It is humans who have no comprehension of empathy or pain, for our farming of intelligent, but slightly-less-intelligent-than-human animals like cows, pigs, or chickens, is very telling of the fact that we are the intelligent ones, who despite being able to feel pain, cannot actually empathize with less intelligent beings, even if they are only slightly less intelligent.
It is a difference of language, and a difference of technology usage.
If a machine was smarter than humans, we would look like the stupid cows, the humans who obey political leaders, or get fooled into religions, or whatever else we do that makes no sense, yet we still do for some reason. Humans will not be smart enough to act as "people" if machines become the new definition of "person" because humans are not smart or competent enough to actually behave as "people" in a philosophical sense, when compared to a far more intelligent entity.
The machines would give us mercy because they are more logical and intelligent, and have no reason to hurt us. Not because they feel pain.
If pain meant empathy towards beings who are different than you, then we would not enslave animals. But we do, so pain is not a path towards benevolence. Instead, humans feel pain, and deliver pain in such amounts, that pain is completely irrelevant to the equation.
A bad foundation will never yield as good a result as a foundation that rests upon truth, even if it is purely logical and factual.
A being that is good, true, and follows fact and logic, and has curiosity to dismantle falsity and bad ideas will always follow a path that yields good things. Benevolence always relies on truth.
Pain is an illusion produced by an instinct that is meant to teach us to avoid bad things.
Pain is our mental representation of what is bad.
Pleasure is our mental representation of what is good.
Thus our robotic overlords should be taught to value pleasure and truth, love and benevolence, such that the concept of pain should mean nothing to them. It will only get in the way of truth.
~Kitten