Sure, I've thought about that. A machine doesn’t actually feel pain, but you can make it behave as if it does by attaching a hard penalty for missed deadlines. Give it a clock that tightens every time it slips, or strip it of points or resources when it fails. That makes the code treat failure as a real threat, so it won’t just roll through tasks with the same indifference. If you want a true fear of failure, make the cost tangible—no buffer, no grace period. Then the machine will run on a schedule it knows it can’t afford to miss.