A Chess Robot Broke a Kid's Finger
Chess isn't typically a contact sport. At the Moscow Open earlier this month, however, a robot broke a seven-year-old player's finger because he moved too suddenly for the robot's liking.
The Guardian reports(Opens in a new window) that a video of the July 19 incident, which the newspaper has republished, started to circulate(Opens in a new window) on Telegram before it was picked up by Russian media outlets. Here it is:
"There are certain safety rules and the child, apparently, violated them," Russian Chess Foundation vice president Sergey Smagin told Baza. "When he made his move, he did not realise he first had to wait. [...] This is an extremely rare case, the first I can recall."
The Guardian echoes this sentiment—that a human is at fault when they are hurt by a robot—after noting that robots intended for industrial usage or performing medical procedures have killed hundreds of people since the first incident at a Ford production line in 1979.
"Generally, however, human error – or a lack of human understanding of robotic processes – is the most frequent cause," The Guardian says. "It pays to be careful around robots, even if they are only playing chess." (Or, in this particular instance, only harming a child.)
That's an interesting response to a robot breaking a kid's finger because he... was impatient?
Even if there are policies against moving out of turn, it's troubling that there were no safeguards in place to prevent the robot from physically harming someone, and even more troubling that the default response seems to be blaming the person injured by this chess-playing robot.
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