The Moscow Chess Open, held last week, ended with a serious incident caused by a robot designed to play the strategic board game. As reported Guardianwho cites local media, a 7-year-old boy broke his finger after the robotrented by the Moscow Chess Federation to compete against humans, will hold him against the board during the game.
Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, confirmed to the Russian agency TASS that the robot broke the little boy’s finger. “This is, of course, bad,” he mentions to the aforementioned medium. Sergey Smagin, Vice President of the Russian Chess Federation, however, assured another medium that the incident was not the fault of the machine, but of the 7-year-old boy, who did not comply with the safety regulations by rushing in and making a move ahead of time. “There are certain safety regulations and the boy apparently violated them. When he made the move on him, he didn’t realize he had to wait first,” Smagin said.
A video shared by Guardian reveals the moment in which the robot, strategically placed between different chess boards to compete against its opponents, crushes the finger of the little 7 year old. The first seconds of the clip show how the robot removes one of the little one’s pieces, presumably because it has managed to advance until it can be removed from the board. Then, the little one proceeds to move his token, while the robot continues its movement and grabs the little one’s finger.
Should the robot have detected the little finger?
The company in charge of designing the robot has not responded to the incident. The doubt, now, is in if the robot should have been able to detect the little finger and, therefore, cancel their movement, or if the fault has really been the minor, who would not have respected the regulations. Christopher, as the little boy is called, is one of the 30 best players in Moscow in the under-9 category. Despite the incident, he was able to continue with the tournament the following days.
Although the vice president assures that this “is an extremely strange case” and is also the first he remembers, it is not the first time that similar incidents have occurred. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the United States Department of Labor, in fact, carries a record not only mishaps due to robots, but also deaths. Among the setbacks, you can read fractures or broken bones from blows with robots, even crush deaths, although it is not specified if it is an intelligent device or simply more advanced machinery.