On July 19th, a chess-playing robot fractured a 7-year-old boy’s finger at the Moscow Open chess competition. The boy is among the top 30 young chess players in Moscow, Russia. The robot revolted as the youngster attempted a quick move without giving the device enough time to finish its task. According to Sergey Smagin, vice president of the Russian Chess Federation, “the youngster is fine, but one of his fingers has been broken”. 

The child broke the safety rules when he rushed to make his next move whilst he had a piece taken by the robot. In that instant, the fear of tech going rogue manifested itself in the open chess tournament. “When he made his move, he did not realize he first had to wait”, stated Sergey Smagin. “This is an extremely rare case, the first I can recall”.  

According to reports, the robot did not appreciate the boy’s haste, grabbed his index finger, and gave it a firm squeeze. Even though the onlookers took out the young player’s finger, the fracture was unavoidable. 

The video of the incident has now gone viral. The robot’s grasp briefly held the child until a woman rushed to save him. However, it took three guys to rescue the boy’s finger eventually. After the incident, defending Artificial Intelligence, Smagin remarked that all acquisitions that advanced AI breaching the laws of robotics would destroy humanity is false.