Chess robot breaks finger of 7-year-old opponent
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
When you start reading the text, you get the impression that the author tried to frame the incident like this "The kid violated the safety rules, it was his fault because he did not wait.". But when you translate the orginal source with deepl, the text (and I guess his only source) comes across a lot different [1]. For example the authors headline feels very misrepresenting having read the russian news info.
Then that last quarter is a tangent about the deathly robots. And thats where it gets really bad. I have to say this: It feels extremely manipulating and fear mongering, a mixture of misrepresented ancedotes to sell a story or make a point. Examples:
A) "According to one 2015 study". In the link, there is no study. There is a link to an US OSHA database search with 48 entries. Whats weird is that "one 2015 study", and "according to the US occupational safety administration" refer to the same database (OSHA). The authors word "indeed" seems circular logic as if he has checked that with a different source. And while it is true, that there are 32 fatalities reported to OSHA, the conclusion " according to [...] most occupational accidents [...] have been fatalities" is blatant misrepresentation. First of all, OSHA did not say anything in this regard, the authors statement is based on the OSHA injury database search with the filter for `keyword=robot`. And with a quick search, I can find at least two non-fatal robot related injuries, that are not keyworded with "robot" and thus not part of the authors own research [3], [4].
B) "Robots used in medical surgery were also held responsible for the deaths of 144 people between 2008 and 2013". When you read the example of medical surgery in the second to last paragraph, you may think, 'oh man, 144 people in just 5 years'. First of all, that number is not correct: The number of deaths between 2008 and 2013 is 143 (See Fig. 3), one death is from 2006. He also conveniently ignores the fact that robot system errors are in fact declining (See Fig. 4), or that 75% of deaths are after the procedure due to e.g. septics, or that the injury and death reports have often non-single-root cause.
Robotic injuries are by no means to be ignored, they are tragic because very likely they could have been prevented. Working with roboters is dangerous, but what the author did is just really bad journalism: Using a story of a robot chess accident to sell a fear mongering piece about robotics.
[1] "The robot broke a child's finger - that's bad, of course. We rented the robot, it has been exhibited in many places for a long time, with specialists. Apparently, the operators didn't watch it properly. The child made a move and then the robot should have had time to respond, but the boy rushed over and the robot grabbed him. We had nothing to do with the robot," Lazarev said. [...] "And the robot operators will probably have to think about enhancing protection, so that a similar situation doesn't happen again" -- Translated.
[2] https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/accidentsearch.accident_detail...
[3] https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/accidentsearch.accident_detail...