At a recent tournament in Russia, a chess robot broke a seven-year-old opponent’s finger.
The incident occurred at the Moscow Open on Thursday. The robot, an artificial intelligence machine, allegedly seized a child’s finger after it tried to move while the robot was still calculating its next move. According to Sergey Lazarev, head of the Moscow Chess Federation, the robot apparently mistook the boy’s finger for a chess piece and grabbed it.
“The robot broke a child’s finger – that’s bad of course,” Lazarev told Russian news agency TASS earlier this week.
“The child did, and after that you had to give the robot time to respond, but the child was in a hurry, the robot caught him,” Lazarev explained.
The boy broke his finger while trying to move #chess Against a robot at a chess tournament in the Russian capital #Moscow.#Russia #Russian #Ah #robot #news pic.twitter.com/F1GuamMkd0
— News (@anews) 23 July 2022
As the footage shows, it took several adult interventions before the robot’s grip broke. However, to his credit, a young chess player named “Christopher” returned the next day and finished the tournament.
Lazarev quickly distanced his organization from the unruly robot.
“We have nothing to do with the robot,” Lazarev said. “Robot operators probably need to consider strengthening protection so this doesn’t happen again.”
Or maybe just no robots?
Sergei Smagin, vice-president of the Russian Chess Federation, apparently felt that the boy was guilty.
“There are certain safety rules and the boy seems to have violated them. Smagin didn’t realize when he made his move that he had to wait,” he said. “This is a very rare case, the first one I can remember.”
Christopher’s parents may not see this. TASS reported that the child’s parents applied to the prosecutor’s office.
Source: Breitbart
