Chess Robot Grabs Seven-Year-Old Opponent's Finger And Breaks It

Next up in the list of reasons to be terrified of the robot uprising, last week, a chess-playing robot in Russia grabbed and broke the finger of a child it was playing against, The Guardian reports.

This incident took place during a game at the Moscow Open, and reportedly occurred as a result of the seven-year-old boy making his move too fast, confusing the robot. 

“The robot broke the child's finger - this, of course, is bad,” president of the Moscow Chess Federation, Sergey Lazarev, told TASS (translated by Google). “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.”

The vice-president of the Russian Chess Federation, Sergey Smagin, doubled down on this, adding that the incident is “an extremely rare case”, and the first of its kind that he can think of. “There are certain safety rules and the child, apparently, violated them. When he made his move, he did not realise he first had to wait,” Smagin said (via The Guardian). 

Reportedly, the young boy is called Christopher and is one of Moscow’s top 30 chess players in the under-nines category. He apparently recovered from the situation very well, and continued to participate in the tournament. 

“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,” Lazarev said (translated by Google). “The robot operators, apparently, will have to think about strengthening protection so that this situation does not happen again.”