re: A robot in a lab suddenly went berserk, marking the first robot rebellion in human history

Here's a longer version of the video with some audio commentary worth considering. The failure is attributed to software errors combined with the robot being tethered. It's apparently a standard safety procedure to tether robots as this one was. In this instance, however, the robot was attempting to balance itself, and when the tether prevented the corrective balancing action from working as expected, the robot went through a series of increasingly erratic movements to try to correct what it thought was an error.

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What I find interesting is that the robot becoming erratic reminded me of the way a poor swimmer might become erratic in the water. For a drowning person, fear inhibits higher faculties in favor of survival instinct (however poorly guided). The body, under stress and juiced with adrenaline, panics and flails about-- attempting to grab or push itself out of the water, though it won't work. In the case of the robot, there aren't true higher faculties. Its movements are always limited in an ontological sense to simple stimulus and response loops... which resemble instinct (akin to how plants instinctively bend towards the sun) more than higher order faculties like reason or will.

In other words, a robot with impaired programmed responses resembles a person with impaired consciousness and will. In the case of the robot, it is a matter of software errors leading to inappropriate responses, but it's happening purely on the plane of stimulus and response, like instinct (there is no reason or will). In the case of the human, it is the absence of a strong enough will to be calm in the face of fear, and an absence of conditioned conscious training, which will lead the body to respond irrationally.

On another note, even though the robot wasn't technically going psycho, it isn't comforting to see a robot that becomes effectively confused by a series of errant input/output loops acting like a deranged person-- both are similarly dangerous.