A chess robot broke a boy’s finger during a match at the Moscow open

The BBC reports that a robot, made to play chess, broke a seven-year-old boy’s finger during a chess match in Moscow last week. You’re able to see the footage below, where the boy was seen struggling to free himself from the robot’s grasp.

If you don’t have the stomach for the video, the clip starts as harmless—showing the robot playing chess with three kids at once. It wasn’t until the victim (the boy in the white shirt) tried to move on his turn that the machine grabbed his finger. Four adults rush to help the boy, who was eventually freed and ushered away.

It was also confirmed that the boy’s finger was broken from the incident. But the boy reportedly was still able to finish the final days of the tournament in a cast.

“The robot broke the child’s finger. This is of course bad,” said Sergey Lazarev, Moscow Chess Federation President.

According to some sources, the robot is a “Chessmate” or “Chessrobot”, and these robots normally don’t try to destroy the fingers of chess prodigies. But looking at one of the robots up close, its “hands” seem scarily sharp and heavy.

There’s also a video of one of the robots quickly moving a piece during a game with a world chess champion—seemingly trying not to lose to a human being.

This is a good time to say that I love robots and wouldn’t try to defeat them in their possible and eventual robot uprising. I also wouldn’t dream of trying to play a chess match with them, either.

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