2023-12-29 15:07:05
In the last few hours, dozens of media outlets have published an alleged news item that claims that a Teslathe company of electric vehicles directed by Elon Muskhas been attacked by a robot. It hasn’t been like that.
This interpretation of what happened is part of the diary sensationalist British Daily Mail. In an article published on December 26, it explains that a worker was “ATTACKED (in capital letters) by a robot during a brutal and bloody breakdown” at the company’s Giga Texas factory near the American town of Austin.
The tabloid would have accessed a Tesla injury report from 2021 in which the incident is described. The engineer was programming two disabled robots when another machine, still operational, immobilized him. The article claims that he “sank his metal claws into the worker’s back and arm, leaving a trail of sangre at the factory.” The injury report states that the accident only caused an “open wound” on his left hand and that he did not need to apply for sick leave.
Accident, not attack
The way in which the Daily Mail and other media outlets narrate the accident is symptomatic, since verbs such as “attack” are used that imply that the robot acted autonomously and with its own will, which is not true.
This article in the “science” section of Daily Mail makes it seem like Optimus decided to attack an engineer.
What they’re actually talking about is an injury involving the Kuka robot in the factory in 2021. Although injuries are horrible they do not hint at a robotic uprising pic.twitter.com/GoGsTroJ5u
— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) December 27, 2023
Words matter, but so do images. The British tabloid and other media accompany this “news” with photographs of OptimusTesla’s anthropomorphic robot, which contributes to feeding the widespread and false idea of ’Terminator‘.
These robots, furthermore, have nothing to do with the machine involved in the accident. The machine involved is a industrial mechanical arm from the company Kuka, a tool designed to manipulate newly cast aluminum parts of Tesla cars.
The specialized medium The Information reported of that work accident in mid-November. Two Tesla factory employees explained that the robot involved in the incident “was inadvertently left running.” The “attack” was actually the “normal movements” it had been programmed for. When another worker pressed the emergency button the machine stopped.
“It is truly shameful that the media brings up a injury two years ago (…) and imply that it is now due to Optimus,” Musk lamented. Workplace accidents are a newsworthy concern and of public interest, but the idea that the artificial intelligence (AI) becomes conscious and threatens humanity is, for now, relegated to the Science fiction. Many experts have denounced that large technology companies spread this alarmist conception with economic interests. The goal of hijacking and monetizing readers’ attention also leads some media to fall into its trap.
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