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.”
Has it been set illegal to disobey “multiple commands” of a privately owned robot?
When police say somebody ignored commands, they mean from them. They don’t get paid to enforce robot commands.
But can they order you to move because you are standing in the way of a robot? Disobeying an order is arrestable, fair enough. Blocking a person is probably illegal (depending on how it’s done). So I’m uncertain of the activity necessary to block such a robot. Just standing straight up an down in front of it sounds legal. Actively and continuously stepping in front of it to block it at least sounds worse. But how do you enforce this? What if a dog blocks or attacks a robot? What are robot/corporations rights?
What if a dog blocks or attacks a robot?
Cops love to kill dogs.
Police get a lot of leeway when telling people to move. I suspect her blocking the robot, may be considered a public nuisance (like blocking traffic or a sidewalk). Her ingore a lawful command to move = jail.
note: this is not support of the robots, just indicating the fact that they are probably allowed under current laws.
“Public nuisance” is definted as an illegal act, condition or thing that interferes with the rights of the general public.
Robots are not members of the general public, and have no rights.
It’s not the rights of the robot in question. You’re legally allowed to get delivery, she is stopping you from receiving that delivery.
It has nothing to do with robots having rights - which they don’t. It’s about deliberately obstructing what another person is doing. Calling it “just standing straight up an down” doesn’t change that, any more than if you refused to make way for somebody pushing a cumbersome shopping cart. How do you enforce this? Well, in this example the cops tried to tell the woman to move along, and arrested her when she refused. If a dog damages property you can sue the dog owner. If you have more questions please look them up yourself.
Of course it changes that. No where in time or space on earth have there been autonomous deliveries moving about in the same space as you or me. So the interesting philosophical and practical question is “who has the right of way”. And as you say - “deliberately obstructing what another person is doing” when there is no person being obstructed. Someone may if may not be waiting. If I was on the receiving end of that meal, I would expect another drone delivering my food. Just as I expect packages to be rerouted if a delivery truck has a break down.
So the answer is “no one knows right now”. Or to be presice, “no one, and especially not you, knows right now. And I for one will find it interesting when it is solved. Just not from you”.
If you want more answers, please go look them up you yourselves - don’t waste my or others time posting it here.
deleted by creator
This is basically the start of the counter to automation. We still tell fables about people who stood againt the devaluation of workers like this.
All hail forced labor? The only “value” AI strip away is a value stamped on the top of your head derived from capitalism. Flipping burgers at McDonalds has value, but it’s no first choice, and the value isn’t extracted by the burger flipper. It’s extracted by the top as the labor is exploited.
If anything, I’m hoping AI is a fuck you to the current broken, down hill rolling system. The world will never be rid of exploitation, but we can point the harm at machines instead.
If anything, I’m hoping AI is a fuck you to the current broken, down hill rolling system.
lol, well, considering the system is currently licking AI’s nasty little clit like there’s no tomorrow… I just don’t think AI is going to do whatever it is you think it’s going to do, lol.
You’ve been drinking too much cool aid.
No, just extrapolating out where we’re headed.
deleted by creator
This is the stupidest thing
Next thing to do, put a VR headset on it, and let it take a magical mystery tour!
Why wasn’t uber arrested for obstructing this woman’s path with their shitty robot?
Should have just built a blocking robot to do it… Or like… A crate.
Just put a garbage bag over it, then smack it with a tire iron.
The temerity!
Instead of fighting innovation I think she should be fighting for workers to share its benefits. For example, when automation means less human labor is needed for a task, what if the workers who do that task could benefit by working fewer hours with no cut in pay? In our current system the owners get all the benefits in the form of increased profits - why can’t they be shared? I would think a college professor would be smart enough to see that and work on figuring out how to make it happen, rather than simply standing on the sidewalk.
In a world that worked according to her standard, we would still have armies of bookkeepers doing manual arithmetic and writing numbers in ledgers, because businesses that tried to use computerized accounting systems would have been boycotted. As a result the whole computing industry would have developed much more slowly, if it developed at all, and we wouldn’t have forums such as lemmy for discussions like this.
It’s fine to not order stuff online yourself. Preventing others from getting what they ordered isn’t.
She should find a hobby which isn’t purely about annoying her environment. Want to be an activist? Well, United Healthcare still exists…Y’all won’t stop supporting fascism otherwise.
Do you really think the person whose food doesn’t arrive will regret ordering from a robot and will then elect to stop ordering takeout?
I think they’re more likely to end up being against the people who got in between them and their food.
They might complain, they’ll definitely call whoever took their money and demand answers.
They’ll be told their order was held up because someone messed with the robot delivering their order. They’ll maybe ask why a person couldn’t have done that job. Maybe they’ll ask if a person would have just sit there being blocked by some random lady instead of just going around her or taking a different route.
Customer service won’t have an answer for them, and next time they go to order food, they probably won’t use Uber eats.
I think that’s incredibly idealistic. I imagine the customer more likely demanding better pathfinding.
If you never get your food, I guess you’ll stop, no? Y’all won’t stop otherwise, it seems.
What she’s doing somewhat parallels protesters who block the freeway. Sure, it creates awareness, but drivers are just trying to get home, get to work, pick up kids, etc. I don’t think it would endear any commuter to their cause.
My reaction to the accusation and general stance is that I would absolutely not want to defend you if someone steals your stuff.
Btw, I don’t see how making people hate you helps you achieving whatever your actual goal is.I’m tired of people coping themselves out of responsibility, stop feeding the systems that are trying to enslave or discard us. Is that such a difficult thing to do? Stop empower our mutual economic abusers. If you suffering is what to takes to get passed your coping and excuses, so be it.
What is the charge? Blocking a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?!
Looking at the replies to your comment… so many people not getting the reference. 🥲
Lol it’s all good. Enough people did that this is one of my top rated comments 😆
Police exist to protect capital, not people.
what about the court system?
oh i get it you’ve never been a victim of crime
no no wait i got it you’re just one of those special people that comes out with stupid one liners
good stuff
They protect capital, sure. They also protect all of us from violent thieves, rapists, and psychopaths.
I see where you’re heading, but
- what do thieves run away with?
- how does the police stop secret rapes while I have a handful of the richest in mind?
- who is regarded as psychopath while I have a handful of the richest in mind?
They also protect all of us from violent thieves, rapists, and psychopaths.
Literally no. The real psychopaths are the people who believe this bullshit copaganda.
Cops don’t prevent crime. They have no legal obligation to protect us. Cops supposedly help to “punish” crime (ie. torture people in cages) but even that’s bullshit. Less than 1% of rapes lead to felony convictions. And anybody who’s ever been robbed can tell you that police don’t do shit.
Aaannnnddd then?
Get your hand off my penis!
no
No and then!
Can I get a shrimp fried rice?
Annnnd theeeeennnn?
NO AND THEN
👀
This. Is. Democracy. Manifest!
I see you know your judo well.
Disorderly conduct.
i’m sure most of the luddites here have never used the internet to order a food delivery
like never
but the robot was the last straw
There are Waymos that drive through my workplace all night long. Like literally every 10 minutes. They cause problems all the time, as we have semi tractor-trailers trying to dock, and they’ll block their movement and then just sit there waiting. They started putting up cones so they wouldn’t pull through but now all the legitimate traffic has to get out and move them around every time they want to come through.
One time I blocked 3 of them in for several hours by trapping them by putting more cones behind them, such that there was no exit. That was fun.
Robot cones that block the bots but move out of the way for cars would be fun.
Narrator: Little did @Acid_Burn know that his innocent comment would kick off The Great Robot War and subsequent collapse of civilization.
You missed a thorn opportunity for “that”
You missed two thorns! Don’t let the haters get you down, keep doing thorns and let the dweebs that hate it for no reason seethe
Yes; I don’t use þem when I’m quoting or using proper names like, Thomas. Even if I’m making up þe quote. It probably doesn’t make sense to anyone else, but it’s easier for me when deciding to use it or not - I just try to be consistent.
I makes me happy to see tolerance!
Easy: mount that cone on a children’s RC toy car.
Your company needs to charge Waymo a toll for usage of your premises.
Alternatively, get a button-operated rising-arm barrier. All a driver needs to do is push the button to get in or out. Unless they’re an AI that can’t get out of the car, anyway.
Edit: Sometimes I a word.
Alternatively, get a button-operated rising-arm barrier. All a driver needs to do is push the button to get in or out. Unless they’re an AI that can’t get out of the car, anyway.
…and send Waymo the bill for it.
What you do is tell the contractor that WayMo already agreed to pay, repeat until you find one of Trump’s dumbass jobbers and hire him.
This definitely happened.
What is so outrageous here?
If you don’t ever do anything, everything becomes unbelievable and outrageous.
Whatever you need to believe that this guy stuck it to the man.
Whatever you need to believe that he didn’t.
Waymo’s have hitl. When you see a Waymo stuck for “hours” that’s the exception that gets blasted across the internet to confirm biases.
They didn’t do any of this. It’s the nerd version of internet tough guy.
You mean they do hitl? They have hitled? They are hitlers?
I heard hitling is bad.
You:
I bet you op looked like this while he was definitely trapping cars 🤣.
God you people are gullible.
I don’t care if the story is real or not. In fact, I’m inclined to agree with you that it’s probably fake. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re all over this thread running defense for fucking Waymo, of all corporations
It’s really not that hard to believe. Waymo will use any available roads to navigate between fares, and it can become especially bad when they’re waiting for fares. Because they don’t just return to a home parking spot and wait between fares. The point is that they want to spread their potential reach (and ensure there are cars nearby regardless of where they’re requested) so they spread out until they need to return to charge/refuel.
They cruise around random backroads and residential areas until a fare requests them. They also avoid U-turns whenever possible, which means they’ll often path through some interesting places just to avoid turning around. They quickly clog residential roads when fares are slow, by all driving in a holding pattern around residential areas that aren’t designed for that kind of through traffic.
Yeah they also have human intervention which kicks most cases far before this could happen but I’m sure this random internet commenter definitely trapped a bunch with cones and held them hostage🤣
Human intervention only automatically kicks in when the car actually thinks it is trapped. Which can easily take a while for larger parking lots.
Also, it’s not a stretch to assume Waymo cuts costs by not having 1:1 coverage of humans to cars and that they triage which cars actually need humans.
👍 definitely happened. In a small internet space you found the edge case. They won’t have video or any evidence but they definitely trapped some Waymo’s
I found absolutely nothing in their comment hard to believe.
If she was not touching the thing then why didn’t it try and get out of her way? It should not be on the sidewalk in the first place, and should not have right of way.
That’s always one of the tricks these companies pull. They take some communally-owned thing that used to have a clear purpose and start using it for their different for-profit use.
Take sidewalks. They’re surprisingly expensive to build, but they’re built from community tax money so that people walking don’t have to walk on the road. Now Uber is using them as a place where they can drive their robots. Are they paying anything? I assume not. Sidewalks have also become a favourite parking spot for rental scooters. Do the scooter companies pay for that? Of course not. Even when they’re parked well they reduce the space available for walking, and when they’re parked badly they can force pedestrians out into the street.
Ugh the rental scooters. Thankfully I’ve seen this dying down. A more common sight in my city now is parking spaces getting turned into bike rental stations. I’m all for that.
Ugh, what? The scooters are awesome, and they cut down on car traffic.
No they don’t. They cut down on walking.
Um, no. They cut down on car traffic. Hoooooooly shit you people are unfucking real. I see bitching about car culture on here constantly, but when an urban area has municipal tools for reducing it, you still bitch. God fucking damn.
Oh well that string of profanity really convinced me. Thank you for clearing that up.
The scooters are so much better though? Just park near where you need to go, not where the bike station is. Just take photos of the poorly parked ones and whoever last parked it gets a fine.
A proper bike system is better though, my city has a city-run bike system with stations on practically every street corner, so it’s much better and just as practical
Yeah the scooters are great, it’s the lack of enforcement for proper parking that sucks.
Like they make you take a picture to prove you parked it properly. One time I screwed up and took a picture of only my feet. Nothing happened.
Better only for the person who drops it right where they arrives at their destination. That is almost never also a sensible place for these things to be. What if everyone just got out do their car the second they were in front of the building they want to go to? That would be so much “better” for them!
That is kind of how taxis work though
The taxi doesn’t just get dropped on the curb when you arrive. It leaves to go serve someone else.
Yeah, it sucks when I get out of a taxi and the driver just gets out and leaves their car there.
I don’t need to repeat dark onions response but did you even think for a moment before commenting?
Except you jjust know they are taking audio and visual, and scanning wifi and phone and other freqencies and sending it all back to base, that’s the problem.
Throw them all into the river! Why rent everything we used to own anyway?
Even if I had my own, I wouldn’t carry it across country for a visit of a few days, but I did rent in such a case more than once.
It’s really more about unenforced safety rules, people sometimes drive like crazy and they always do that on the scooters they own, because rental have a speed limit
Rental makes sense for this because not everyone wants to take a scooter back home and charge it
Not the way it’s being done it doesn’t make sense. A locally owned place that had rules against spying on everyone, and sweeping electronics, yes. A silicon valley operation whose purpose is as much collecting data as it is rental fees, is not.
I found myself wondering about this. If you stand blocking the entrance to a building, and won’t move when the police tell you to, I guess I can see them turning that into a disorderly conduct charge. Of course we are solely debating whether blocking a robot is a crime, but their rationale iin court is probably going to be more based around obstructing a place of public accommodation or something like that.
They should’ve given her a warning, the police. To go right to arrest, is a favour that waymo called in to the local policians, probably followed by others donating some cash.
It really is like that, even with prosecuting attorneys that drop charges against the rich, like former manhattan city da with several people, including Weinstein was it? 30k or something donation right after he drops charges. There were several incidents, they didn’t even bother to use intermediaries there.
She did have multiple warnings but she stood true to her rights
Maybe the robot should be charged for blocking her way
Cops will violent attack anyone who threatens capital. It has almost nothing to do with “laws”.
What a badass.
That is the crime she was arrested for? Not yielding to a clanker using the sidewalk? Wow, what a joke.
The police arrest protesters for refusing to move on all the time.
You can fight it in court
You can’t stand on a sidewalk? That’s criminal mischief? This level of bullshit should make everyone’s blood boil.
You can’t intentionally impede someone/something’s progress repeatedly, I think is the point. She’s welcome to stand off to the side and protest all she wants, but not deliberately and continually preventing the robot from moving.
If she didn’t like buses and just stood in the bus lane one day and blocked traffic, she’d be arrested just the same.
That’s nowhere comparable. A sidewalk is ostensibly an area for pedestrians to be, whether in movement or stationary. It is not a road, and definitely not a robot road. If the robot is too stupid to navigate someone standing in an area designed for people to stand, that’s not the person’s fault.
You want a comparable situation? This is like you sitting on a public bench in a park, then I come up to you and demand you to move so I can sit. After you say no, I call the cops and they arrest you.
I don’t disagree about the robots using the sidewalk, but for now, that’s allowed, even if it’s dumb. The law hasn’t caught up.
I think the park bench is analogy is wrong because a person sitting isn’t equivalent to a traveling delivery robot. Surely one does not expect the entire sidewalk for their own use, robot or not, just like no reasonable person could demand a bench from someone actively using it.
I think a better thought experiment would be you walking down the sidewalk to work, and then me getting in your way specifically and preventing you from moving any further forward. Then you get mad (rightly so) and call the cops because someone’s bothering you and you can’t get by. If I were to continue to block you when they arrive and tell me to step aside repeatedly, and I still don’t move to let you past, of course I’d be arrested.
It’s stupid because I agree with her and your position about the robots, but not the method used here. It’s very old man yells at clouds energy to me.
I can just walk around you. Why doesn’t the bot do it?
Say it with me everyone: police exist to protect capital.
She ought to be careful about blocking the wheelchair ramp, otherwise she’s all good
It was incredibly courteous of her to allow it onto the sidewalk before stopping it.
