Live data from Hacker News

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

newsbeezer.com

171–180 of 509 posts

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

#171

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.

It's appalling the robot was designed to ever use that much force in the grip. Even if the chess pieces were made of lead I can't see it being needed. In general, more attention to failing safe.

But the kid is some kind of local chess champion, I can't fully fault the decision to have him play with the experimental chess robot. Is it more dangerous than a lawn mower or a blender or any other machine that 9 year olds might begin to operate?

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

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 FW…

Genuine question: is Tesla’s autopilot crashing more often or more severely than human drivers?

There was a post recently with a video of a Tesla attempting to drive into the path of an oncoming train: https://youtube.com/watch?v=yxX4tDkSc_g

It’s not the big mistake at the end that stands out to me but the sheer volume of mistakes it makes along the way. Edging forward at an intersection when there’s a red light for example.

I don’t doubt that self driving tech will improve and be a safer alternative to a human driver eventually. It doesn’t seem like we’re there yet though.

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

#173
post #90

It's Russia we're talking about. In Russia, the default mode of answering any complaint is "it's your own fault, we're not responsible, go away". It's not only on the big political scene - it's everywhere, from a village grocery store to a national federation. If you admit any mistake and any responsibility for anything, you're an idiot and a "loch" (pronounced the same as Scottish lake, but means a person to be take…

Come on, there is no way they are that cartoonish.

It's not cartoonish, it's the culture. Of course it's not homogenous - you can find a lot of people that go against the mainstream. In a hyper-macho culture you can find males who are shy and sensitive, in an introverted culture valuing privacy and closeness you can find people who are extroverted and exuberant, in a culture where accepting blame is not encouraged you can find a lot of people that will readily do that. When you describe the culture as if it were a single person, it will necessarily get a little cartoonish because we are reducing millions of people to one description. But I think this description matches the dominating culture quite well - though you of course always need to realize not everybody follows it to the same degree, and some people would eagerly defy it.

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

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, there is no way they are that cartoonish.

If you consider how Chernobyl was handled it doesn’t seem that far off?

Wrong country, wrong establishment.

Apparently a lot of you dont know the difference between USSR, Russia and Ukraine. Stay safe out there.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are in fact times when we need to think about children. If we don't, humanity won't have much of a future.

Quite the contrary, I think. Society has become "soft", for lack of better words. If we had been so risk-averse centuries ago, the industrial revolution would have never happened.

I'm confused. You think if we don't let robots break childrens fingers because we insist on proper safety, then the industry of physical chess playing robots might never get off the ground?

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, there is no way they are that cartoonish.

They're not. It's a massive country with many different races and cultures in it. Painting them all with one brush isn't very nice.

Well of course Chechen culture or Buryat culture or Tatar culture or Chukcha culture will be very different. But this is not the culture that dominates functionaries of federations in Moscow. "Imperial" Russian culture is. That's the one I am talking about. Of course on Russian territory there are many other cultures, but these are not ones I considered.

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

#178

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.

It's appalling the robot was designed to ever use that much force in the grip. Even if the chess pieces were made of lead I can't see it being needed. In general, more attention to failing safe. But the kid is some kind of local chess champion, I can't fully fault the decision to have him play with the experimental chess robot. Is it more dangerous than a lawn mower or a blender or any other machine that 9 year olds…

Correct. The fact they made a robot that could crush a human hand means they paid no attention to this hazard. Competent execution of Safety in Design concepts would demand limiting the grip force to only what's necessary to reliably move the pieces, which almost certianly wouldn't break bone. If that isn't possible, then it would imply the requirement to find some other way to resolve this hazard in the heirarchy of controls.

Relying on a human is the last option, not the default, when it comes to safety. Human adaptability is not a licence to hand-wave away design responsibility. The most glaring example is Tesla, who is unforgivably guilty of this.

This is bog-standard competent engineering in almost all domains of engineering. It is the table stakes-level expectation of a reasonable approach to safety. I'd literally end up in jail if something went wrong and I had been found to not consider these factors.

Software- and computer-related domains of engineering are a conspicuous outlier when it comes to this philosophy.

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what do you use it for? I'd love to play around with one but I can't think of many use-cases beyond showing it off to guests.

It’s to move pcbs for firmware uploading and testing. I built the jig for firmware uploading and testing last year. Had to place the pcb on the jig manually and wait (~2 minutes) for the process to complete. I’m building the robot cell this year which will do a batch of ~15 pcbs at a time. I update often on Social Media! http://www.instagram.com/kokonautinc MG400 is really affordable, Dobot also has a smaller educati…

[deleted]

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

#180
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“It was cheaper” is how Chernobyl nearly permanently destroyed the water supply of all of eastern and parts of Central Europe.

Every part of that reply is wrong.
Post reply on HN