Irish Examiner view: Robot chess contestant makes wrong move

AI systems are meant to emulate humans but the chess-playing robot at a Russian tournament showed a violent, darker side

The video showed the boy’s finger being pinched for several seconds by the robotic arm of the AI chess contestant. Picture: TASS/Guardian

For those pursuing the role artificial intelligence (AI) can play in modern society, there was something of a blip in Moscow recently when a chess-playing robot broke the finger of a seven-year-old boy it was playing in a tournament.

The robot displayed a level of petulance normally associated with humans rather than machines they have created.

The boy in question — he has only been named as Christopher — was one of 30 of the best chess players in the under-nine category in the Moscow region. The robot appeared to pounce after it took one of the boy’s pieces.

Instead of waiting for the robot to complete its move, the boy acted quickly by way of riposte and the robot grabbed his finger and broke it.

“This is, of course, bad,” said Sergei Lazarev, the president of the Moscow Chess Federation. And so say all of us.