Some of the world’s leading minds may have penned a letter expressing concern about the dangerous side of artificial intelligence but, for now, humans really are the worst.

We brought you the story a few weeks back about hitchBOT, the robot hitchhiking its merry way across the U.S. and making friends everywhere it went. Well that journey came to a sad and predictable end after some fool vandalised the robot in Philadelphia. The video footage of the attack can be seen up top.

The Canadian team behind the robotic thumb-traveller mistakenly thought folks down south would be as friendly and accommodating as your average Canuck, something that was proven not to be the case. This from CBC:

“The head, as far as we know, is missing,” said McMaster University professor David Smith…noting that some of its electronic parts had also been stripped out…

…by Saturday afternoon, Canada’s tiny beloved traveller announced its own death.

That from the grave announcement via Twitter below:

The social media tears began to flow immediately, prompting fellow creator Frauke Zeller to release this statement taken from CNN:

“What we see now is the outpouring of sentiment and people expressing their feelings — thousands,” she said. “We didn’t expect that, and this is something you don’t tend to find in typical human-robot interaction experiments…

We know that many of hitchBOT’s fans will be disappointed, but we want them to be assured that this great experiment is not over…”

The way people are carrying on you would think someone shot a lion or something.

Here’s wishing you a speedy recovery hitchBOT, hope to see you back on the road in the near future.

[sources:cnn&cbc]