this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2026
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A retired Penn professor has been blocking Uber Eats robots for months. This week, she got arrested for it (www.phillyvoice.com)
submitted 18 hours ago by UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
114 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53250107

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."

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[–] AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

"I know they're taking the jobs of human delivery workers and so, I have been protesting them whenever I saw them by standing in front of them and preventing them from going forward," Marvin said.

I mean fuck. Do we want people working as delivery drones? Really? The other post in fuckai about this doesn't even mention she's been doing this for month which obscures why she's been arrested.

And climate change is real you know? A small robot takes little energy compared to a full sized car.

Ideally delivery robots should be state owned and accountable to democratic processes. They are a valuable and useful innovation to solve logistic problems. A way to reshape how neighborhoods are build and planned and make them more energy efficient.

This dogmatic opposition to anything AI is really becoming more and more irrational, less and less grounded in facts and rational arguments. AI needs to be regulated. Like China currently does AI regulations best, but we can't even imagine things like that any more because people just accept neoliberalism as the new world order and screaming is the only thing left to do apparently instead of demanding regulations or nationalization of certain AI infrastructure. Maybe this is linked to some kind of anti-democracy propaganda campaign. Divide and conquer, and don't even let talk about regulation enter the public discussion.

[–] altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 15 minutes ago

I think that to trully give urgent delivery services a purpose we need:

  1. Abandon 0-day delivery services unless they serve a significant purpose, e.g. for immobile persons, delivering medicine, etc. That would erase like 95% of required labor;
  2. Reclassify the rest as a communal service, mostly on a regular schedule between known clientelle;
  3. Optimize paths between vendors (or hubs) and delivery targets for the remaining fleet. At this point a minimal system is upheld by a minimum number of members of community who don't need to hurry and use motor vehicles;
  4. Create an option to offload some delivery task to other community members who live nearby and go this route anyway, probably via some app;
  5. Allow for less urgent delivery jobs being posted, but always served by the members of the same community. Community collectively defines what non-critical deliveries hold value, e.g. delivering flowers for a birthday celebration can be seen as okayish to do.

Fetch quests, when optimized, provide some persons with meaningful labor that keeps up their physique, and their, and then others' involvement ties the community together and makes personal connections between people in it. Drones navigating the sidewalks humans use are irrelevant if the amount of labor needed is not overwhelming to begin with, and doesn't need to be optimized by producing expensive robots and computer vision models.

[–] Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's replacing a dude on an ebike, not a car

[–] AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml -2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

You should dream bigger. We have the technology to not need delivery drivers any more, but you want to keep them? Why? Because you think neoliberal capitalism can't be replaced with something more just and socialist? That is my charge against this whole critique. Why the fuck do you want people working crappy delivery jobs?

All of this should be replaced by a national post office type of delivery service.

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 2 points 14 minutes ago* (last edited 13 minutes ago)

This kid is the difference between idealism and reality.

In an idealist world, automation would fund UBI, which would fund a higher quality of living for everyone. Which is effectively parallel to what you're arguing here, in it's fundamental mechanics.

As you can probably see, many Western nations don't have UBI. Why? Because automation doesn't give back to the people, automation provides more wealth to a few corporations and individuals.

The same thing goes with delivery robots. It largely benefits the corporation, which can cut additional expenses by not having to pay a human. Where does that money go? It goes to line someone's coffers. If it was taxed appropriately, then that money could go back into the public, but it doesn't.

People don't want to work crappy delivery jobs. They do it out of necessity in order to buy food and pay rent, and the buying of that food and the paying of that rent also increasingly goes to smaller set of large corporations.

That's the reality.