Robots aren't sentient, but that doesn't stop them from doing bad things.
Saudi Arabia's first "male" humanoid robot made headlines last week after it was accused of inappropriately touching a female reporter at an artificial intelligence conference.
A video of the incident at the DeepFest conference in Riyadh, showing a robot trying to touch a reporter's buttocks, was posted online. Some X users condemned the bot named Muhammad as “perverted,” while others criticized its programmers.
Khaliq Mohammad, QSS, told Metro newspaper that it was “completely autonomous” and operated “independently without direct human control”.
This isn't the first-time robots have gone crazy. In 2022, a child had his finger broken by a robot during a chess game, Russian news agency Tass reported.
Sergei Lazarev, head of the Moscow Chess Federation, told Dice at the time that the child made a chess move but the robot wasn't given enough time to react, so the robot caught him.
It is worth noting that it is highly unlikely that Mohammed intentionally contacted the reporter, as robots cannot feel anger or sexual desire.
Or as Gail Spencer, CEO of robotics company Engineered Arts, told Business Insider: "This reaction is more reflective of human nature, trying to humanize things that aren't actually human." I can say I do. "
LIMITED FUNCTIONALITY
AI robots are far from reaching human capabilities, Jeff Cardenas, CEO of Apptronik, which produces humanoid robots, told BI earlier.
According to him, their functions are still relatively limited, so they do not yet reach work and are much less capable of self-knowledge.
As Cardenas said, they can only do a fraction of what humans do. Damien Shelton, president of Agility Robotics, told BI that while the robots are being tested in Amazon's warehouses, they are still a "relatively new development."
But investors are pouring big money into robotics companies because they're expected to change the future of work. The most common applications are storage systems that help move and transport heavy loads.
QSS told Metro that it asked conference attendees to "keep a safe distance during the robot demonstration." In the future, "additional measures will be taken to ensure that no one approaches the robot in its mobile areas," the statement said.
This incident highlights the need for companies developing humanoid robots to be aware of unintended consequences, including ethical, moral, and safety issues, particularly related to human-robot interaction.
This raises the question of whether more stringent safety measures are needed to ensure that people are not harmed when the robot misbehaves.
It also highlights how machines can misbehave and raises safety concerns. However, despite their growing importance, their impact on our daily lives is likely to be minimal for the foreseeable future.
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