‘This, Of Course, Is Bad,’ Moscow Chess Federation Admits After Robot Attacks 7-Year-Old Boy During Tournament, Breaking His Finger
In a failure of Asimov’s First Law of Robotics, a chess tournament took an apocalyptic turn when a robot programmed to play the game attacked its 7-year-old opponent, grabbing the boy’s hand and fracturing his finger before he could be freed.
The troubling moment, reported by Russian state news agency TASS and flagged by The Washington Examiner, happened at a tournament held on July 19 in Moscow.
According to the TASS report (via Google Translate from the original Russian), the robot had been rented by the Moscow Chess Federation, and the organization’s president Sergey Lazarev provided the following description of the incident, saying that the attack was triggered by the boy failing to pause long enough after the robot had moved its chess piece:
“The robot broke the child’s finger — this, of course, is bad. The robot was rented by us, it has been exhibited in many places, for a long time, with specialists. Apparently, the operators overlooked it. The child made a move, and after that we need to give time for the robot to answer, but the boy hurried, the robot grabbed him. We have nothing to do with the robot,” Lazarev said.
“The child played the very next day, finished the tournament in a cast, and the volunteers helped to record the moves. Moskomsport called now, the parents want to contact the prosecutor’s office, we will communicate, figure it out and try to help [the family] in any way we can. And the robot operators, apparently, will have to think about strengthening protection so that this situation does not happen again,” he added.
A video of the event posted on the Baza Telegram Channel shows a young boy move a chess piece, followed by the robot, and then the boy quickly picks up one of his pieces, only for the robot to suddenly grab him. He struggles for a few moments until spectators rush to his aid and are able to free him.
Text posted with the video (again, via Google Translate from Russian) indicates that the “Chessrobot” was designed to play three chess games at once and identifies the robot’s victim as “Christopher,” who is “one of the 30 strongest chess players in Moscow under 9 years old.”
Baza provided a more colorful description of the incident, writing that “Christopher hurried a little and was already making a return move,” but “the robot did not like such a hurry” and “grabbed the boy’s index finger and squeezed it hard.”
“Whether the robot will be put to sleep after this is unknown,” the caption concluded.
Watch the video above, via Baza Telegram Channel.
