Police confirmed they had responded to a report of “criminal mischief involving a robot” on the 1200 block of Filbert Street around 1:16 p.m. on Wednesday. A woman on the scene ignored “multiple commands” to move, they said, resulting in a criminal violation notice for disorderly conduct.
Uber declined to comment.
Marvin, who plans to contest the charge on the grounds of her First Amendment right to protest, has been undeterred by the arrest. She plans to continue blocking Uber Eats robots and chatting with curious passersby who ask what she’s doing.
“It allows me to talk to people about what’s going on,” she said. “It’s always very interesting conversations that we have, and I think it’s good to have those kinds of conversations in public space.”
threaten corporate profit = disorderly.
we all exist only to serve the corporate master who pay no taxes and buy our politicians.
For those who cannot read due to paywall / geofencing.
A retired Penn professor has been blocking Uber Eats robots for months. This week, she got arrested for it
Kristin Hunt
3 minutes
On Wednesday afternoon, Carolyn Marvin was leaving her flu shot appointment when she spotted an Uber Eats robot rolling down the Center City sidewalk. So she did what she has done for months whenever she’s had the time: stand in front of it.
MORE: Penn Wood High School suspends sports programs as it reviews student safety
Marvin, 78, said she’s not sure how many times she’s blocked the path of these robots, which hit the streets of Philadelphia in March. The University of Pennsylvania professor emeritus has made a practice of it to protest “corporations that displace human delivery workers in order to enrich their own bottom line.” Her past encounters have circulated online. The Wednesday incident was the first time, however, that the police got involved.
Officers approached Marvin after she’d been there “quite a long time,” she said. They asked her to step aside and let the robot complete its delivery. When she repeatedly refused, they arrested her for disorderly conduct.
Police confirmed they had responded to a report of “criminal mischief involving a robot” on the 1200 block of Filbert Street around 1:16 p.m. on Wednesday. A woman on the scene ignored “multiple commands” to move, they said, resulting in a criminal violation notice for disorderly conduct.
Uber declined to comment.
Marvin, who plans to contest the charge on the grounds of her First Amendment right to protest, has been undeterred by the arrest. She plans to continue blocking Uber Eats robots and chatting with curious passersby who ask what she’s doing.
“It allows me to talk to people about what’s going on,” she said. “It’s always very interesting conversations that we have, and I think it’s good to have those kinds of conversations in public space.”
Marvin characterizes public opinion as “divided.” Some people are very supportive, she said, while others view her protest as unfair to the customers who paid for delivery. Marvin usually tells them if they’re “concerned about money,” the robots’ impact on delivery workers should worry them, too. She is careful never to block the sidewalk to human pedestrians, she added.
Before Marvin retired, she taught a course on freedom of expression at Penn. She doesn’t see her actions as an extension of her academic work, however, as much as civic engagement.
“I would say it’s my citizenship,” she said. “I’m exercising the rights of my citizenship, so I think of it in those terms.”
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Tbh I think this will lead to a major defining legal precedent based on if this even goes to trial , dropped or if she found guilty or not. I don’t think we’ve had many cases like this before
It’s interesting.
On one hand, she’s just standing in a public space and being compelled to move. No bueno. On the other, the machine is conducting commerce. Do you have a right to stand in front of a parking spot to block entry? Generally no, we say you’re disorderly or causing civil harm.
The real solution isn’t to protect jobs people are basically forced labored into, but fix the system that makes all the benefits flow up.
Ultimately she might end up accelerating the harm if this keeps happening and growing. Somewhere down the line, just as they did to corpos, some idiot judge will approve bots having “personhood”. Pandoras box.
Corporation-owned robots have more rights than people it seems
I think this is just another corporations have more rights than people thing. If someone was blocking a delivery truck with a human driver to protest whatever company they worked for the cops would probably arrest them too.
Why wouldn’t people have the same rights? I am pretty sure if someone keeps blocking me I could call the cops and they would show up (after some time).
Question is rather why a robot would have the same rights. Or rather why a company has these rights for their robot.
People can adjust to each others’ paths. For these robots, it seems that they always have priority over the human, which is no bueno. The robot should go around you, not the opposite.
Sure, I didn’t contest that. I just contested the claim that robots seem have more rights than people, because this incident isn’t and indicator for that.
Oh and I think the robot did try to get around her. If I read the articles about this incident right, she kept blocking it; it’s a protest after all.
Because corporations are people, my friend.
I understand where you’re coming from, but surely if you compare apples with apples and substitute a human for the robot, like the professor wasn’t letting people in a wheelchairs get past, the response would have been quicker and more severe.
How tf is a human and a robot an apple and an apple?
Yes, if is was a completely different situation that only superficially resembled this situation it wouldn’t be the same thing.
Yeah, what they’re describing sounds like a hate crime against disabled people, what this lady did is just protesting a company with shitty business practices
That robot could’ve been delivering a prescription burrito at which point she would be harming a person disabled with hunger.
Big if true
See, you say that’s apples and apples but it’s a totally different scenario. Apples to apples is changing the robot with a different type of robot that’s doing a job that a human previously would have done. By changing the robot to a human, it’s a different argument because it’s a human and not a robot. A human has different rights than a semiautominous delivery device. So apples to apples would be: instead of a Uber robot, it’s a waymo car.
By changing the robot to a human, the argument falls apart because she’s protesting using robots for jobs humans are capable of doing and traditionally did. If the robot is swapped to a human, she wouldn’t be protesting because that’s what she’s advocating for. It being a human, not a robot.
Maybe “apples to apples” is a poor choice of words, because you completely misunderstood what I meant by it, which is really the whole point of choosing which words to use. That’s on me, but you did completely misunderstand, so I feel inclined to explain.
When they said, “Corporation-owned robots have more rights than people it seems,” it seemed to me that they were basically saying something obviously incorrect for the humor of it. They never intended to compare actual human rights with apparent robot rights.
By “apples to apples,” I meant, “Let’s actually tangibly compare the rights of a robot in that situation with the rights of a human in the same situation. Not the rights of a robot compared with the idea of diminishing human rights.”
Really, the stupidest part of this in my book is a very bad reaction to my comment that simply stated the plain truth. If a lady on a sidewalk is blocking people in wheelchairs from passing, then that person will likely be arrested as soon as the police can show up, so obviously people have more rights than robots in this situation.
Edit: For clarity, the reason I brought up wheelchairs is that the robot cannot leave the sidewalk, so I wanted the human version of that.
But this is not an apple vs apple situation. It is a human vs a robot. I doubt you actually meant that a robot and a human in a wheelchair are the same?
You really think somebody harassing and blocking somebody in a wheelchair wouldn’t end the same way or worse for the harasser?
I really think someone in a wheelchair has absolutely nothing to do with what happened here. What are you even talking about?
Did you just equate a corporate appliance with a vulnerable human being?
No, I didn’t.
Yes you did.
Feel free to explain how.
“What if X was Y” is equating something unless you clearly articulate how it makes the thing dfferent. Your question reads to me that you are saying she was arrested just like she would be if she blocked a wheelchair.
Based on down votes it looks like others read it the same way.
Comparing similar situations =/= equating the value of two things, which is what I’m being accused of.
Your question reads to me that you are saying she was arrested just like she would be if she blocked a wheelchair.
Am I wrong? And how else would one compare the relative “rights” of humans vs robots?
Based on down votes it looks like others read it the same way.
Who cares? People vote based on personal feelings. It means nothing.
The person they replied to is the one that introduced the comparison. You’d probably get smacked with a disorderly conduct or possibly even a kidnapping charge if you blocked even an able bodied person from walking in a public space. That doesn’t mean this lady isn’t based, but I don’t see how this scenario represents corporate property having more rights than people.
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Yes, it would be worse for the harasser if they harassed another human being with rights instead of automated corporate property whose limited “rights” shouldn’t take precedence over a human’s.
So a robot doesn’t have more rights than a person. Glad we agree.
Agreed, and I say that as someone who fully supports what this lady is doing.
You guys want humans to deliver goods as a job forever? I understand not replacing artists, musicians, etc.
In an idea world yes but more that the robots are owned by mega corporations and ultimately have the goal of charging the customer as much as they can with the cheapest possible service
The flock bots get in my way when I’m walking down the sidewalk. Fuck 'em
You don’t own the sidewalk, it’s public
Hey sidewalks are public, therefore there is zero issue. Glad that is resolved.
We probably should have a support system in place before we replace everyone with robots first. But that will never happen.
Yup. I have no real problem with the concept being pushed around of automation giving us freedom, except that our capital obsessed society has no plan for how to support humans during this revolution and little willingness to even entertain the idea that it’ll be necessary.
We can’t pay for universal income until robots pay off the national debt which is 40 trillion
People need jobs to survive.
Only in the current system, you can’t imagine a better system where we are free from mindless work?
I thought she ignored commands from the robot, but the police came to get her out of the way? Did Uber call the cops on her? Why didn’t they ask the cops to deliver the food too? Scrub some Uber toilets?
hero, honestly. if uber wants to fuck with workers, no reason workers shouldn’t respond in kind. this is not so different from the luddite response to automation, imo.
Unmanned equipment on a sidewalk that’s for humans should get tipped over and left to get scrapped
IDK if they can do stuff about pools being “attractive nuisances” I’m pretty sure fucking with a robot counts as well, Uber should do more to discourage it, maybe they should have to pay for a security escort?
