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.”
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.