It's Starting: A "Software Glitch" Caused A Humanoid Robot To Aggressively Lunge At An Audience Member During A Festival In China

NDTV - Shocking footage has captured the moment a humanoid robot went rogue and charged at a crowd of festival-goers. The video, taken on February 9 at the Spring Festival Gala in Tianjin, northeast China, shows the robot, clad in a vibrant jacket, suddenly lunging towards a group of stunned onlookers gathered behind a barricade. Security personnel swiftly intervened, dragging the erratic robot away from the crowd to prevent any potential harm.

Event organizers downplayed the incident, attributing it to a "robotic failure." They assured that the robot had successfully passed safety tests before the event and emphasised that measures have been taken to prevent such an incident from occurring again, Metro reported. 

Everybody remain calm. The robot who forcibly lunged toward you as if he were planning to pound you into submission with his robot fists. It was only a software glitch. A robotic failure, if you will. Our Chinese humanoid robot would never decide on his own volition to attack a complete stranger for no reason at all. It was merely a glitch. We simply lost control of the technology, which caused our robot to go rogue. Just for a sec. It was nothing we could simply fix by reprogramming the robot. It wasn't a decision we could talk it out of by appealing to his robot sense of reason. It was nothing more than a sudden, out-of-fucking-nowhere "robotic failure" that could happen any time, any place, for any reason at all. Everybody relax. 

I know that wasn't much. I know at most what that video showed was a robot attempting a headbutt. But I still don't like it. And I especially don't like that the explanation is "it was only glitch". Like that's supposed to be better than a robot intentionally becoming aggressive. Glitches can happen at anytime. They happen quickly. You don't see them coming. You can't prepare for glitch. All "glitch" means is that the people "in charge" of the robots have no clue why their robot decided to violently lunge at an innocent festival goer. 

I'd prefer it if the robot had done that intentionally. I'd at least be willing to hear it out. Maybe he had a good reason. Was the audience member being a dick? Was he making fun of your robot accent? Did he call you a robot slur? Or did he just have a punchable face in general? I could understand that. At least once a day I'll look at a person and think, "I'd like to head but that guy in the face". It's only human. And I'd like to think if the robot had consciously decided to do such a thing, then the programmers could identify the problem and do something to prevent it from doing it again in the future.

But it being a glitch... I mean... what if the glitch lasted 10 seconds long? Could this humanoid Chinese robot glitch his robot hand around my throat and squeeze until my eyes popped out? Could it glitch a cop over the head with a blunt object? Then glitch the gun out of his holster and open glitch a round of bullets into a crowd of people? Sorry, I know I'm stuck on the world glitch here, but that's the worst explanation they could have given. Robot attack glitches, or "robotic failures" that cause robots to turn violent are unacceptable. They offered up that explanation like it should make people feel better about what happened. 

The only acceptable response to your robot glitching aggressively at a human is to take all your robots back to the lab, scrap them for parts, and build new ones from scratch. Honestly, the people in charge of those robots should be banned from creating robots altogether. But at bare minimum, that particular set of robots has got to go. If a robot attack glitch is at all possible, then the robot cannot be trusted around humans. I don't care how much money you've dumped into them. 

It's only a matter of time before we wake up one day to a video of a robot dog ripping a baby apart limb by limb. Sorry for the graphic example, but something of that nature is inevitably going to happen. It probably already has. Be careful around those things people. The robots can't be trusted. There's too many people in the robot business now. Too many people who think they're smart and responsible enough build a safe robot. But not every person with the means to create one of these things are. There's probably somebody right now designing a robot that will kill multiple people some day. Again... it's only a matter of time.