October 14 wasn’t the first time Carolyn Marvin came face-to-face with an autonomous delivery robot. It had become a habit for this 78-year-old woman since the small wheeled food containers were unleashed on certain neighborhoods in Philadelphia: standing in front of one of the robots when she encountered it rolling down the sidewalk, delaying it for a few minutes before delivering her precious lunch cargo.
But it was the first time Marvin, a retired University of Pennsylvania communications professor, had been arrested for it — in a case that she said raises profound questions about public space and the legal protections afforded to robots in our increasingly technology-dominated world.
“I felt like I had more rights than the robot,” Marvin said with a laugh.
Uber Eats launched its fleet of autonomous delivery robots in Philadelphia in March, making it the fourth city where meals can be delivered by robot. Not everyone appreciated these little heart-eyed machines: In Philadelphia and elsewhere, videos show people sitting on them, vandalizing or kicking the robots.
Marvin says the impact of his individual protest is limited. “I have a life, so I don’t have a lot of time to stand in front of robots,” she said. If she encounters a robot, and it is “practical and possible” for her, she can spend 10 or 15 minutes blocking it, while moving, to delay it in its journey.
The only harm that comes from her hobby is that an office worker’s lunch bowl “can be delayed by about 15 minutes at most,” she said.
She sees her actions as a symbolic protest against the problems posed by delivery robots: the displacement of low-income delivery workers; the physical danger posed by robots on the sidewalk; and the privacy concerns posed by robots’ built-in cameras.
“I also believe I have a right under the First Amendment to protest corporate abuses in public space, in the same public space that robots occupy,” she said. In the past, she has demonstrated in favor of civil rights, abortion rights, Black Lives Matters and for the end of the Gulf and Vietnam wars. She sees her robotics mission as an extension of the same impulse: “This is what we need to do to make sure the government hears the will of the people. »
Stopping in front of the robots, Marvin said, led to productive conversations with other passersby who asked her what she was doing. Most were supportive or curious. She never thought she might be arrested, because, as she said, “I wasn’t in anyone’s way, I was in the way of a machine.”
That’s until the 14th. On the way home from getting his flu shot, Marvin, with a jar of enchilada sauce in one hand and takeout chicken biryani in the other, encountered one of the robots and stopped in front of it, as usual. It was in a busy part of town and a larger crowd than usual began to gather around her. Some were supportive; some were critical. She suspects, she said, that a member of the crowd eventually called the police, who handcuffed her and placed her in the back of a squad car, giving her a citation for disorderly conduct.
Marvin said one of her friends put it this way: “Well, you were charged with disorderly conduct for obstructing capitalism.”
Philadelphia police said they responded to a report of “criminal mischief involving a delivery robot.” When they arrived, “officers encountered a woman who refused to let a delivery robot pass,” they wrote in an email. “Police issued several orders ordering the woman to move; however, she refused to comply.”
Following his arrest, Marvin learned more about the legal infrastructure that protects robots. In 2020, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a law that classifies autonomous delivery robots — what the law calls “personal delivery devices” — as pedestrians, not vehicles. Democrats, along with unions and accessibility advocates, largely opposed the law on the grounds that legalizing delivery robots could kill jobs and endanger children and pedestrians; Republicans touted it as an exciting technological breakthrough.
The law means a vehicle must yield to a delivery robot in crosswalks, just as it would to a person, said John Mattiacci, a personal injury attorney in Philadelphia. Yet in theory, humans are at the top of the hierarchy: “Personal delivery devices must yield the right of way to other pedestrians and cyclists in a pedestrian zone,” he said. Uber Eats did not respond to a request for comment.
Marvin sees the proliferation of delivery robots – and their legal protections – as another case of machines and technology infiltrating daily life. “We gave the streets over to cars a long time ago, and I don’t think we should give up the sidewalks to machines,” she said.
“Machines in general are encroaching on our lives,” she continued. “Public space is the most visible place where they are encroaching on our lives, but they are moving up the ranks and many people want that to happen.”
Much of the technology people encounter every day is less tangible: the mass adoption of AI, the mysterious social media algorithms that determine the images and narratives audiences consume. Robots, on the other hand, are a clear and visible symbol of technological takeover, an easy target for anti-tech anger. Her protest, she said, “makes it visible to people and presents the issue in a way that couldn’t be presented otherwise.” When asked if she planned to start blocking bots again after her arrest, Marvin was succinct: “Oh yeah. » But now she’s going to watch the cops.
Gn bussni
