With everyone from Google to Elon Musk warning about artificial intelligence or AI, this story is especially timely. A Russian robot learning to promote a company’s products and ‘automatic movement profiles’ escaped from its testing grounds in Perm, Russia, near the Ural mountains. The machine made it to a busy intersection, snarled traffic, and the police were called.
“The robot was learning automatic movement algorithms on the testing ground, these functions will feature in the latest version of the Promobot.” The co-founder of the robot’s maker, Oleg Kivokurtsev, told ura.ru news agency.
“Our engineer drove onto the testing ground and forgot to close the gates. So the robot escaped and went on his little adventure.” Kivokurtsev explained, reports RT.
The team only noticed the device was missing after 45 minutes and by that time, police and onlookers were already puzzled.