The 7-year-old, identified as Christopher by the Russian news outlet Baza, is said to be one of Moscow’s best chess players under nine years of age. His opponent on July 19 was Chessbot, an artificial intelligence-equipped robot trained to simultaneously play up to three games of chess. Christopher was challenging Chessbot alongside two other human players when the machine grabbed hold of the boy’s finger and wouldn’t let go. By the time Christopher got free, his finger was broken.
Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, told state-owned TASS that the robot had played several games of chess without incident before. And then he stated the obvious: “The robot broke the child’s finger. This is, of course, bad.”
Bone-breaking robots are bad, especially when the public doesn’t know why said bone-breaking occurs. Footage of the incident depicts Chessbot plucking a piece from the board and adding it to a bin of discarded pieces. Christopher quickly goes to make his next move, and the chaos begins. Chessbot grabs onto Christopher’s finger smoothly and unceremoniously. Though there’s no audio and Christopher’s head blocks some of the action, it’s clear the boy is attempting to remove his hand from the robot’s grip.
A few adults eventually jump up to Christopher’s rescue, and after a few too many moments of struggling, they free the boy from his robot opponent’s grasp. But it’s unknown whether Chessbot thought it was picking up a chess piece or was startled by Christopher’s eager move (which, it should be said, wasn’t particularly sudden or erratic). Was Chessbot performing the way it was meant to, but without the right safeguards in place? Or did it lash out on its own, having been thrown off by its human opponent’s body language?
The Russian Chess Federation insists it’s the latter. The organization’s vice president told Baza that Christopher had violated the “safety rules” by failing to allow Chessbot to complete its move. Safety guidelines are typically a good idea when it comes to operating or interacting with machinery, but if the Russian Chess Federation is correct, this incident has exposed a major gap in Chessbot’s engineering. Robots designed to work in close proximity to human hands ideally have security measures in place to prevent bone-snapping and other shudder-inducing injuries. One would especially think so when the robot might be used alongside children.
Christopher’s parents reportedly filed a report with the public prosecutor’s office following the incident. Not all is lost, though: Christopher had his finger in a cast and was able to play in a chess tournament just one day after his harrowing experience, with volunteers helping to make each move.
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