According to the news of The Guardian, a chess robot that almost looks like a combination of Black Mirror and Queen’s Gambit accidentally broke a seven-year-old rival’s finger during a demonstration in Moscow. The boy apparently moved his stone too soon, and the robot grasped and squeezed his finger, causing it to break before help arrived. “The robot broke the boy’s finger,” said Sergey Lazarev, head of the Moscow Chess Federation, adding: “This is definitely a bad thing.”
Video footage shows the robot grabbing the child’s finger and holding it for a few seconds as a group of humans come to the rescue. The cause of the problem isn’t clear, but Lazarev said the boy “made a move and then the robot had to be given time for its own response move, but the boy rushed and the robot caught him.” He pointed out that suppliers of the robot may need to work on the safety aspects and said they will “have to think again”.
Later, this young chess lover was identified as Christopher and finished the tournament by continuing to play the next day. However, his parents reportedly contacted the prosecutor’s office. Russian chess official Sergey Smagin said the incident was “accidental” and that the machine was “absolutely safe”.
This event can be seen as a modern example of the dangers of robots even in such a harmless activity as chess. But when it comes to greater scale with technologies like robotic cars, eliminating these risks is of far greater importance.
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