Maybe it was pushing her buttons! Watch the bizarre moment a woman flips out at a robot receptionist and smashes it up with a plank of WOOD
- Footage shows unfortunate bot getting struck at a hospital in Xuzhou, China
- But robots can also be the perpetrators of violence, as demonstrated last year
- READ MORE: Chess-playing robot in Russia ruthlessly breaks a child’s finger
New footage captures the moment a woman loses her cool with a robot receptionist and smashes it up with a plank of wood.
The bizarre incident, which took place at a hospital in China, shows the unidentified woman beating the unfortunate machine five times while shouting furiously.
Fragments of the bot are sent spinning across the lobby floor as she delivers powerful blows to its head and torso.
But despite the damage inflicted on it, the plucky robot appears to survive the savage attack when it turns its head and lifts its right arm.
Robots can also be the perpetrators of violence, as demonstrated last year when a chess-playing machine broke a child’s finger in Moscow.
Fragments of the poor robot are sent spinning across the floor as she delivers powerful blows to its head and torso.
According to Jiangxi Morning News, the recent incident took place at Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University in the city of Xuzhou.
READ MORE: Chess bot breaks boy’s finger
A chess-playing robot (pictured) broke a child’s finger during an international tournament in Moscow in 2022
Staff at the hospital judged that the woman had a ‘mental problem’, according to the Chinese site, and the police eventually intervened.
Bystanders in the hospital lobby can be seen staring from a distance as the extraordinary occurrence takes place.
In between strikes, the woman shouts at the machine while brandishing the plank of wood menacingly.
The video was circulated on Chinese social media network Weibo before being posted to Twitter by @songpinganq.
The Twitter user suggested the woman in the video was a patient at the hospital who grew angry at the waiting times.
‘Because now in China’s hospitals, make the doctor and all medical examination appointments are all done on the robots, very few nurses left to help the patients. Many find it a frustrating process,’ @songpinganq said.
The robot is positioned in front of the hospital’s reception desk, so it could have been the first port of call for new patients – although there are human staff sat behind the desk.
The bizarre incident, which took place at a hospital in China, shows the unidentified woman beating the unfortunate machine five times – although the attack appears to have started before the footage commences
Staff at the Xuzhou hospital judged that the woman had a ‘mental problem’, according to Jiangxi Morning News
It’s unclear if the woman, who sports short cropped hair and a yellow jacket, is still in police custody.
Will a robot take YOUR job? READ MORE
Experts in Switzerland revealed the jobs most likely to be taken by robots (file photo)
But the event could symbolise a general sense of unease surrounding the reliance of technology on public-facing roles that used to be taken by humans.
China is a leader in workplace automation and is known to have replaced human workers with machines in fields such as manufacturing and hospitality.
According to a 2016 report, more and more factories in China are using robots on the assembly lines to replace workers who demand high salaries.
China’s leading AI expert Kai-Fu Lee has previously predicted that technology will take over half of all jobs by the mid-2030s.
Certain employment sectors are facing a crisis ‘akin to that faced by farmers during the industrial revolution’, he said.
Unfortunately, history has shown that robots can backfire in the workplace, leading to gruesome injuries and fatalities.
One of the most gruesome robo-accidents involved a 49-year-old Chinese factory worker, known as Zhou, back in December 2018.
Zhou was hit by a rogue robot that collapsed suddenly, impaling him with 10 sharp steel rods in the arm and chest, each one foot long.
The first person to be killed by a robot was Robert Williams, an American factory worker, in Flat Rock, Michigan back in January 1979.
Williams, 25, was killed instantly when he was struck in the head by an industrial robot arm designed to retrieve objects from storage shelves.
Read MailOnline’s summary of the worst robotic accidents in history here.
WHY ARE PEOPLE SO WORRIED ABOUT ROBOTS AND AI?
It is an issue troubling some of the greatest minds in the world at the moment, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk.
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk described AI as our ‘biggest existential threat’ and likened its development as ‘summoning the demon’.
He believes super intelligent machines could use humans as pets.
Professor Stephen Hawking said it is a ‘near certainty’ that a major technological disaster will threaten humanity in the next 1,000 to 10,000 years.
They could steal jobs
More than 60 percent of people fear that robots will lead to there being fewer jobs in the next ten years, according to a 2016 YouGov survey.
And 27 percent predict that it will decrease the number of jobs ‘a lot’ with previous research suggesting admin and service sector workers will be the hardest hit.
As well as posing a threat to our jobs, other experts believe AI could ‘go rogue’ and become too complex for scientists to understand.
A quarter of the respondents predicted robots will become part of everyday life in just 11 to 20 years, with 18 percent predicting this will happen within the next decade.
They could ‘go rogue’
Computer scientist Professor Michael Wooldridge said AI machines could become so intricate that engineers don’t fully understand how they work.
If experts don’t understand how AI algorithms function, they won’t be able to predict when they fail.
This means driverless cars or intelligent robots could make unpredictable ‘out of character’ decisions during critical moments, which could put people in danger.
For instance, the AI behind a driverless car could choose to swerve into pedestrians or crash into barriers instead of deciding to drive sensibly.
They could wipe out humanity
Some people believe AI will wipe out humans completely.
‘Eventually, I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this,’ DeepMind’s Shane Legg said in a recent interview.
He singled out artificial intelligence, or AI, as the ‘number one risk for this century’.
Musk warned that AI poses more of a threat to humanity than North Korea.
‘If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea,’ the 46-year-old wrote on Twitter.
‘Nobody likes being regulated, but everything (cars, planes, food, drugs, etc) that’s a danger to the public is regulated. AI should be too.’
Musk has consistently advocated for governments and private institutions to apply regulations on AI technology.
He has argued that controls are necessary in order protect machines from advancing out of human control.
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