r/technology • u/GenericKittyKat • 8h ago
Robotics/Automation Woman arrested after blocking delivery robot in Center City Philadelphia confrontation
https://6abc.com/post/woman-arrested-blocking-delivery-robot-center-city-philadelphia-confrontation/19941323/71
u/forcedfx 7h ago
Why are motorized vehicles allowed on sidewalks?
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u/Vashsinn 5h ago
we can't get bike lanes, you want robot lanes? drone lanes? I sure wouldn't want to get stuck behind one.
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u/GamingWithBilly 4h ago
If we're going to ask that question, let's ask the other ones. Why are skateboards bicycles and e-cycles allowed on sidewalks? Because there isn't an ordinance blocking it. Glad I could answer that for you.
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u/DrunkenChimichanga 3h ago
wait you guys are allowed to ride those on the sidewalk? Only small children on a bicycle are allowed to use the sidewalks here.
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u/newebay2 3h ago
Lots of cities allows it because roads are deathtraps without at minimum cycling lanes
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u/oatmealparty 3h ago
Why are skateboards bicycles and e-cycles allowed on sidewalks? Because there isn't an ordinance blocking it. Glad I could answer that for you.
Most towns do have laws against it. Philadelphia being one of them, you will get a fine for riding a bike on a sidewalk.
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u/C-creepy-o 8h ago
Arrested on what charge?
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u/Surrealspanner 8h ago
Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?
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u/randynumbergenerator 3h ago
I literally just watched a Tor's Cabinet of Curiosities vid on this guy (spoilers: it gets dark but it's fascinating).
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u/C-creepy-o 8h ago
She was charged with disorderly conduct...she was as far as I can tell standing still on a public sidewalk. So the disorderly conduct was her refusing to comply to police illegal asking her to move off a public side walk while she was standing still doing otherwise nothing else wrong? I just completely don't understand the justification here.
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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 7h ago
According to police, Marvin repeatedly blocked the robot's path and ignored multiple commands from officers to move.
Sorta sounds like she kept moving into the robots path not just standing still from that line
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u/Vhorbis 7h ago
Is that a crime though? in PA?
IANAL but as i see it, If it isn't a crime to block a delivery bot's path the woman did no wrong when she ignored the police commands. The police would have started commanding a US citizen who had not broken the law while being on public property. I think this lady is going to make bank and some states will get delivery bot laws that will give bots better rights than people in some specific situations.
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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 7h ago
Not sure she'll make bank.
I think this part of the statute is what they're using
creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor.
Probably arguing her blocking it creates a hazard to others
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u/fender4life 6h ago
Isn't protesting a legitimate purpose?
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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 6h ago
Can protesting not create a hazard? And, if you're by yourself protesting you're at higher risk of arrest cuz you're easier to get
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u/fender4life 6h ago
You would have to create a hazard or physically offensive condition which does not serve a legitimate purpose. Even if she is creating a hazard, the way the law is written (per your citation at least), she would have to be doing it for no real reason. I don't disagree that protesting alone makes you a target, but that doesn't mean the arrest is legal.
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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 6h ago
While protesting might be a legitimate purpose for her it would serve no legitimate purpose for the clanker. So I think would still work.
Like, if I'm protesting I can't block a sidewalk normally
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u/Key-Demand-2569 6h ago
I’m so fascinated by what some people believe justifies “making bank” legally.
If she was found to have been illegally arrested and treated by police AND she loses her job or is otherwise measurably financially harmed by this event then sure, she might make decent money off of this.
But most likely it won’t be significantly more than the restitution for money she was expecting and lost. And whatever her therapy/physical rehabilitation bills were, harm to future income, etc.
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u/Vashsinn 5h ago
is the same as blocking someone in a wheel chaor. it's a dock move at the least. sure sure fuck klanlers, but fuck that one guys meal too am I right? -_-
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u/Herodotus420_69 5h ago
No it’s definitely not the same blocking a human in a wheelchair. Are you out of your mind?
Obviously a human has rights and delivery robot doesn’t
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u/Vashsinn 5h ago
that's not the point dimmy dimisión. Noone is saying robots have rights. everyone is saying stop blocking the sidewalk.
if I park my car, blocking a self driving car, in front do you, an I breaking the law? why? it's an empty car. cars don't have rights.
-_-
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u/Herodotus420_69 3h ago
In the US it’s called Sidewalk Obstruction which is defined as impeding the free flow of pedestrian traffic (which doesn’t apply to delivery robots)
Blocking the road is actually illegal
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u/Phage0070 2h ago
> Is that a crime though? in PA?
Probably, and in most other places too. If you are standing on a sidewalk and someone walks up, you probably don't need to get out of their way. You have as much right to be there as they do. However, if someone tries to walk around you and you repeatedly move to block their path then you probably are committing a crime. Disorderly conduct for example, as "being a little shit" isn't in the books.
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u/MrPookPook 7h ago
Why was there unattended machinery on a public sidewalk? Seems like a hazard and our sidewalks would be safer without them.
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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 7h ago
Maybe so but the states and cities don't seem to have any rules banning them. So what isn't banned is allowed
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u/Plumb-Entangled 6h ago
Are you sure?
Most sidewalks prohibit motorized vehicles and bicycles usually
With the exception of mobility aids, ie wheelchairs
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7h ago
[deleted]
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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 7h ago
I made the comment twice in separate replies cuz I don't expect people to read every single comment, and I'm replying to specific people.
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u/Primal-Convoy 8h ago
Read the article.
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u/Meowakin 7h ago
Yeah, the police are protecting the capital, not the people. I get that the police told her to move, and that’s the reason, but what reason did the police have to tell her to move?
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7h ago edited 7h ago
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u/Meowakin 7h ago
Pretty much this - we have no laws saying one way or the other, so far as I am aware. So what law would the police be enforcing?
Obviously, I am not a lawyer, but I feel like if we were legislating for robots, I’d have heard some sort of news to that effect.
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u/mark3748 7h ago
PA Title 75, Chapter 85 (Act 106) covers PDDs, 18 Pa.C.S. § 5507 covers obstructing public passages, and she was charged under 18 Pa.C.S. § 5503. Plenty of laws that apply to this situation.
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u/Meowakin 4h ago
Who was she obstructing?
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u/Yarusenai 3h ago
The robot, and so also other pedestrians.
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u/Meowakin 3h ago
Were other pedestrians actually blocked? And does the robot have rights?
To be clear, my point is not ‘abuse robots’ - it’s that they do not have any legal status
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u/thatirishguyyyyy 6h ago
The honest question here should be why are they even allowed on the sidewalk in the first place. The sidewalk is for pedestrians not motorized vehicles.
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u/GamingWithBilly 4h ago
The way laws are written are to stop behaviors that society don't want. Nobody's written this law yet, which is why it's allowed on the sidewalk. That's why there's sometimes laws that say you can't ride skateboards or bicycles on the sidewalk downtown where it is high pedestrian traffic for businesses, but you absolutely can ride a bicycle or skateboard on sidewalks everywhere else.
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u/Bad-job-dad 7h ago
All those dystopian movies where the robots rise up and fight to stop being mistreated are full of shit. Corporations will own the bots and they'll make sure they get better treatment than us.
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u/emerikanSky 8h ago
Nobody be arresting robots.
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u/C0ld_Fr0nt_ 8h ago
As John Connor told Kyle Reese to do, "smash those metal motherfuckers into junk".
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u/OuterSpaceBootyHole 7h ago
This was always gonna be the result for the "you just hate fun" people who cheer on these robots. Private companies always take precedence over the public.
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u/Olympicsizedturd 7h ago
We should be taxing them additionally if they're using our public sidewalk.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 5h ago
They are very bulky. If there are dozens of them on every sidewalk in the future, there will be no room to walk.
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u/AFlyingGideon 7h ago
Only if we also tax delivery humans for their use of our transit paths. There's also the question of whether we should tax vendors for the use of those paths by their customers.
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u/FinderOfWays 7h ago
Do you not pay taxes? You know you have to pay taxes right? The government gets famously quite upset with you when you don't. The implicit deal is that gets you (the human) use of sidewalks. When you start deploying robots on walking paths, then yeah I think having you pay extra tracks.
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u/TrontRaznik 6h ago
You know businesses pay taxes right? Local, state, and federal. They also pay for licenses for various things.
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u/Olympicsizedturd 6h ago
Great idea, a "sidewalk license" could be an alternative to the "sidewalk tax". It just depends if we want a one-time fee or a recurring stream of revenue. I think we should tax them by the mile. These robots have wheels, they're heavy and they cause more damage and take up more room than a person, thereby necessitating the tax.
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u/TrontRaznik 6h ago
Why would we add a tax like that? Why would we require a specific fee for sidewalk use? Do these robots cause more wear and tear than a human courier? If so, that would make sense. if not, what is the reasoning other than that you don't like robots?
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u/AFlyingGideon 3h ago
Do you not pay taxes?
I do, as do the robots' owners and customers.
The implicit deal is that gets you (the human) use of sidewalks. When you start deploying robots on walking paths, then yeah I think having you pay extra tracks.
Why pay extra? Would you also charge additional fees to human delivery drivers, couriers, etc.?
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u/Javontarious 4h ago
But if a crackhead is blocking and harassing you they don’t do anything about it.
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u/Own-Chemist2228 6h ago
It's a shame this sub doesn't value discussions with any depth. So many comments here are "robot bad!"
This story does raise some interesting legal and ethical questions about the relationship between humans and technology.
The robot is a tool being used by a human, although indirectly. If the delivery cart were being operated directly by a human driver, would her actions be more or less legitimate? Of if it were being operated remotely, but still directly by a human? Or if a human took over remotely when it got stuck? Or if were just a human pushing a cart, trying to make a delivery?
Her actions were directed at a machine, but they did impact humans. The employees of the company, the person who ordered the delivery. And yes, even the owners of the company. (Of course here on reddit, corporations are universally evil even though most of us in the technology industry work for one...)
I would think if someone deliberately impeded a specific person doing their job, this would be viewed very differently. But what is the definition of a person doing their job?
At what level of autonomy do we say it's just a machine that is completely detached from any rights or ethics associated with humans?
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u/blu-bells 6h ago
I could be wrong, but I don't believe Open Ai is facing crimimal prosecution for the hugging face cyber attack, only civil lawsuits.
As this woman was arrested, she is being held criminally liable.
I am not saying this woman should or should not be criminally liable for acting towards a machine in a way that impacted humans. But I do think that if we determine that impeding a robot is a crime, then we should hold companies whose ai agents go rogue and commit crimes like this criminally liable as well.
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u/Own-Chemist2228 5h ago
That's another interesting facet to these issues. How do we hold automations accountable?
The idea of holding the delivery robot accountable in the OP story is honestly ridiculous. It wasn't a standoff were both parties were being stubborn. The woman had intent to impede, (that is not debatable as she explained this in her interview in the article.) The robot did not have intent to impede, nor did it impede her. She wanted the standoff to happen. It was her objective.
But the Open AI situation is very different. There was some human intent to do things that were at least pushing boundaries of criminal laws. And then the machine crossed those boundaries because of lack of human supervision. I definitely see a strong argument for holding humans accountable in this instance.
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u/blu-bells 5h ago
I think if we are at the point of talking about the robots intent, and if it is a victim of a crime or not then that means we were at the point of needing to discuss what happens when a robot commits a crime months ago.
An automation cannot be held accountable. Simply "turning it off" isn't being held accountable as the actual company behind it will just fork the code and rehost it. So the human individuals who are supposed to be responsible for that automation and benefit from that automation must be the ones held to account.....Except broadly speaking when a company commits a crime the 'accountability' is always just a fine for the business itself. That isn't accountability, it means the action is legal for a price.
Our legal system is not equipped for this, and speaking personally I find it to be unacceptable that we are currently at a point in which humans can be held liable for committing crimes against robots, while robots (and their human benefactors/owners) are not held liable for committing crimes against humans.
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u/GamingWithBilly 4h ago
She's being criminally held liable for blocking the sidewalk. She was creating a barrier preventing the robot from moving on and doing its job. That blocks everybody's else's ability to walk on that sidewalk. The robot wasn't purposefully blocking anyone on the sidewalk. It was moving along doing what it was programmed to do. If the robot was in the road, do you think she would have let it gone by? The article and her own statements have already made it clear that she was purposefully blocking these robots to try to impact its ability to do business because she felt like they were stealing human jobs. Her intention was to interfere with a business's ability to conduct business with its customers.
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u/blu-bells 3h ago
Was she blocking other humans from using the side walk? I assume not because they have the capacity to move around her. Standing on the sidewalk with your two legs is not a crime. Laws about blocking a sidewalk are more so about using equipment, like say, a small vehicle, or an autonomous robot, to take up space on a sidewalk to the point a human cannot use it.
I do not think equipment that moves on its own should be on the side walk or roadway without supervision. Period.
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u/mdutton27 6h ago
Just hire a human to deliver it?
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u/Own-Chemist2228 5h ago
Ok, but this is the technology sub. May as well change the name to luddites based on the responses here.
Technology has been "replacing" humans for centuries. And there has been pushback for just as long. This is just another chapter in story that has been going on for generations. There are common themes, but AI also introduces new elements.
Surely the discussion could have more depth than "robots bad!"
Because just like the automated loom, they ain't going away.
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u/Corgalas 5h ago
She purposely goes out of her way to stand in front of them and block them.
It's petty. It's childish. It's disruptive.
She should have been arrested? No.
Is she the problem in this situation? Yes.
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u/Gogo202 2h ago
It's interesting how redditors want to normalize people bring assholes, as long as it's aimed towards something that they don't like.
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u/opermonkey 7h ago
The residents of Philly should show those clankers the hitchbot treatment they are famous for.
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u/Animalmother172 7h ago
There a gofundme or similar to help cover her legal costs? This is some extra grade-A bullshit with police prioritizing robots over the public
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u/Yarusenai 3h ago
The sidewalk she intentionally blocked would've blocked pedestrians as well as the robot.
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u/anicho01 6h ago
Soo, a human is arrested for blocking a robot?! Why is that even a crime?
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u/GamingWithBilly 4h ago
I'm pretty sure it's because she was also blocking the sidewalk doing that. The robot wanted to continue on its way, and wasn't purposely impeding traffic on the sidewalk. The woman was stopping the robot creating a impeding situation. She was not allowing it to go by, and these things are usually pretty big. Her actions was actually creating the problem, and I'll tell you if somebody was behind that robot in a wheelchair and wanted to continue down the road but couldn't, because she was the problem... That's the reason she was arrested.
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u/Ms74k_ten_c 4h ago
Humans becoming 2nd class citizens to robots was in my 2030 bingo card, not 2026.
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u/Gunningham 2h ago
It’s bad enough we said corporations are people. Now robots are too?
I remember feeling bad for the robots in movies like AI and Blade Runner, but I think I’m starting to get it.
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u/evlway1997 4h ago
It seems like she doesn’t understand that delivery robots cannot take over the world. Just ignorance of technology.
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u/ConspicuousWhiteGuy 7h ago
Future AI will judge humanity in how we react here...
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u/cubitoaequet 5h ago
Future AI can suck my human dick. What a stupid thing to concern yourself with.
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u/zedguy 7h ago
Preventing someone from getting their food delivery - well done
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u/scotchtree 4h ago
That kinda sucks though. I don’t use delivery apps often, but I mostly used them when my kid was born and I couldn’t leave my home with a newborn sleeping in the next room. You don’t know who’s ordering.
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u/camthedestroyer 7h ago
Resist the clankers.
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u/TrontRaznik 6h ago
Offer a skill that can't be replicated by a box with wheels.
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u/camthedestroyer 6h ago
Keep that energy when they come for you.
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u/TrontRaznik 6h ago
If a robot comes for me, it will be a much more complex robot than a cube on wheels.
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u/Bruges_1 7h ago
Perhaps she felt threatened by the robot beast. Some day we will read about someone shooting the robot beast and claiming self-defense.
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u/michaelcreiter 7h ago
Time to rise up against the machines
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u/silverbolt2000 6h ago
Yep. Everyone should also do this to robot vacuum cleaners, robot lawnmowers, car washes, etc...
Going out of your way to obstruct a piece of machinery that's just doing a basic service is not weird at all, and definitely not an indicator of mental health problems.
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u/BeMancini 8h ago
Disorderly conduct for standing on a public sidewalk. I don’t imagine the charges sticking.
The robot couldn’t get past her. That sounds like the robot’s problem.