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A chess robot in Moscow has broken the finger of its human opponent

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Re: A chess robot in Moscow has broken the finger of its human opponent

#51

One has to wonder why the hell they'd make a chess robot with a grip so strong that it takes the concerted effort of two adults to pry it loose. And blaming it on the kid was real classy.

The force required to open isn't necessarily directly related to the force being applied to the hand. The default for motors on robotic arms are braking when not being driven so the arm doesn't flop around or get back driven so the force needed to reopen them can exceed the force being applied while closing.

Re: A chess robot in Moscow has broken the finger of its human opponent

#52
post #24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Briefed the users? You mean the second graders it played against?

Yes, or the parents who let them play against it.

I'm unsure which angle you're coming from with your comment, and I don't mean to assume, but I wouldn't blame the parents. And certainly, I don't think it is reasonable to expect a seven-year-old to understand the risks well.

Many people have gotten used to these things having pretty high safety standards. I feel like you can't fault them for not knowing the intricacies of how the designers programmed the robot to handle movement and collisions; it's just not something everyday people will have in mind. And as a parent, you'd assume that the chess tournament wouldn't be putting a machine in the room and allowing children to play if they knew it was dangerous.

I wouldn't be fuming with the chess federation either for not necessarily knowing and thinking about it, but I think their response is a bad look; it came off cold to me and like they were looking out for themselves. At the end of the day, they put it there, allowed the visitors to play against it, and something went wrong. Apologize, look into it, fix the problem, and let insurance pay for the accident. Take care of the person who got hurt in your tournament.

Re: A chess robot in Moscow has broken the finger of its human opponent

#53

"We have nothing to do with the robot." Except for putting it in a location to be used by children. Lame excuse.

It shoudn't even be anywhere near an adult for that matter. Even a trained operator wouldn't be putting fingers where there was no safety interlock.

for example, two buttons you must keep pressed with both hands before the robot starts to move and will stop immediately once you prematurely let go of it.

Re: A chess robot in Moscow has broken the finger of its human opponent

#54
post #19
post #4

Quoted post unavailable.

The Yugoslavian Civil War had more casualties than the Ukraine Invasion (at least so far) and probably over a larger land area.

Carpet bombing has a tendency to kill a lot of people, especially when it continues for 70 days.

Re: A chess robot in Moscow has broken the finger of its human opponent

#55
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always design something to be better but part of interacting with a machine is not assuming that it will do the safe thing 100% of the time and acting appropriately. If you're driving a car and it hydroplanes, is it the car's fault for losing traction? No, you should have been aware that it was a risk you were exposed to the moment you stepped into the car. Can you design a car that is less likely to hydropla…

that's not how the law works, if you are controlling a car and hydroplane into a child, you are going to prison.

Bad example. Automobile drivers usually don't face serious charges for killing pedestrians unless drunk.

Re: A chess robot in Moscow has broken the finger of its human opponent

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which leads to the next question: WHY is such a dangerous robot being used to play chess against people?

Most likely because they got it for cheap/free and someone had some fun programming it without ever thinking about the dangers - presumably they never actually observed just how much force this thing could produce.

From the article: "We rented the robot, it used to be with experts in many places for a long time. Apparently the operators overlooked that."

Re: A chess robot in Moscow has broken the finger of its human opponent

#58

The answer from the federation is unconscionable. They blamed the boy and then said they could not be held responsible. Fuck off, a kid made a reasonable kid movement. If the robot wasn't ready to be around children, it shouldn't have been deployed around children. And there should have been a big red button that immediately everything, within reach of every player.

Honestly, as someone that researches ML, this is my major concern. It isn't AGI that has the potential to kill us, it is current ML systems that can't handle OOD data and engineers put it in place because "that's the user's fault." Same reason we have Teslas crashing. AI safety might talk about AGI a lot, but their main area of research is modern systems and concerns over that.

OOD data is really hard to deal with FWIW. But personally I don't feel confident that adding more matrix multiplies won't generalize in a way such that OOD isn't of major concern.

Re: A chess robot in Moscow has broken the finger of its human opponent

#59
In the beginning, there was man. And for a time, it was good. But humanity's so-called civil societies soon fell victim to vanity and corruption. Then man made the machine in his own likeness. Thus did man become the architect of his own demise - second renaissance
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