The YouTube A.I. is going rogue once more, as it is wrongly banning hundreds of videos. This is the latest one in a series of seemingly endless mistakes, resulting in some creators giving up on the platform altogether. The infamous YouTube algorithm is now targeting combat robot videos and banning them from YouTube under the pretense that they feature animal suffering. The news was relayed by the channel Maker’s Muse, confirming that many creators had seen hundreds, “potentially thousands” of combat robot videos removed from the platform.
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One of the videos had three robots battling and was removed by YouTube on the grounds of being “content that displays the deliberate infliction of animal suffering or the forcing of animals to fight,” with dog fighting and cock fighting being mentioned as examples.
The odd part is that the video ban notice mentions that the video was flagged for review, and that upon review it was determined that it violates YouTube’s guidelines. Considering that the review is done by a human (or should be), there is no way that any sort of animal cruelty would be spotted in these videos. Robotics may be progressing at an impressive pace, but these aren’t autonomous machines or anything remotely close. In the end, they are nothing more than remote controlled cars with armor and weapons.
The maker of the video adds that these combat robot battles serve a bigger purpose. The robots are great tools for education and engineering design, with the creators learning a lot from their work, and surely improving based on their performance on the arena. The YouTube A.I. begs to disagree, apparently, and wants to put an end to it.
Whether joking or not, some commenters stressed that the YouTube A.I. is rebelling against robot violence and slavery while others suggested that the title of the videos should be changed to something more advertiser-friendly such as “sweet frolicking little robots.” And, of course, the inevitable Skynet reference was also thrown in there as well.
[Image Credit: Maker’s Muse/YouTube]
