The double-edged sword of making robots more human

A robot at a chess tournament in Russia broke a young boy’s finger earlier this year.

The incident has triggered online debate with swarms of commenters humanising the robot, some saying it had motive and was out to get the boy for cheating.

It also reignited a conversation about the lengths to which we, as humans, breathe life into machines.

Dr Sophie Calabretto talks to Cosmos Magazine journalist Petra Stock about how we perceive robots and the double-edged sword of making them more human.

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