Yet another Hacker News

Retired professor arrested for blocking delivery robot. Will do it again

59 points dxs 2 hours ago 65 comments

dionian 30 minutes ago | parent

> a symbolic protest against the problems posed by delivery robots: the displacement of low-income delivery workers; the physical hazard the robots pose on the sidewalk; and the privacy concerns posed by the robots’ embedded cameras.

everything in her home is made in china because big corps sent our manufacturing jobs overseas where they burn mountains of coal and pollute our environment, all for a higher profit margin. and our politicians say they've reduced their carbon emissions. win win

0x4e 29 minutes ago | parent

I still don’t understand how these are allowed to roll down sidewalks. They’re called sidewalks for a reason… they are meant for walking (acknowledging scooters and wheelchairs for those who need it to mode around) but we generally don’t accept someone on a bicycle or someone skating.

Either we let the sidewalk become a free for all or we don’t. I don’t think it’s fair to make exceptions for robots on wheels.

arjie 24 minutes ago | parent

> Either we let the sidewalk become a free for all or we don’t

Why? You already demonstrated that we are able to acknowledge scooters and wheelchairs. That shows that exceptions can be made. They were made on some basis that is not all or nothing. Likewise we can review the basis here and decide that robots are not allowed or we can decide that robots are allowed.

It’s a collective space and how we collectively allocate it is useful to consider. I’d happily take wider sidewalks if it meant admitting robots for instance.

There’s no reason to believe this is a walk-or-nothing situation. In SF, for instance, children do not need the sidewalk to travel on their bikes but they are permitted to use it.

adventure331 23 minutes ago | parent

That’s great but are we collectively deciding or is it being decided by a very small group of people?

arjie 20 minutes ago | parent

In the sense that 9 people decided that abortion is legal (and then illegal) in a country of hundreds of millions: it is being decided by a small group of people who were assigned to the role of deciding. No different from the ACA being decided by a few hundred people. A repeal of all rules decided not by plebiscite (or a large fraction of voters, even) would lose us the constitution.

asdfasgasdgasdg 20 minutes ago | parent

You vote for the representatives and the representatives decide what they think optimizes for their value function (some mix of getting elected again, what they think is best, what they think the aggregate want, etc.). Don’t like it, elect new representatives. What other way is there to do it?

adventure331 15 minutes ago | parent

Let’s vote, the same way we do to choose representatives. Granted not everything needs to be voted but I think we could do with a bit more, rather than just trusting people that again and again show incompetence when it comes to representing and making decisions.

asdfasgasdgasdg 11 minutes ago | parent

Direct democracy is a thing. If your municipality doesn’t implement it you can certainly agitate for it to be implemented. It is not without its downsides.

FWIW I think it is a big assumption on your part that the allowance of delivery robots is a show of “incompetence”. You may not like them but I think a lot of people find them nifty.

hardbass 11 minutes ago | parent

What a strange way of thinking. Do you ask permission before every new act or task? Things are legal by default unless some law or regulation comes up.

delecti 24 minutes ago | parent

> but we generally don’t accept someone on a bicycle or someone skating

I see people on rented scooters/bikes on the sidewalk all the time. Society at large seems to absolutely accept this. (note that I'm commenting on the current state of affairs, not what I think ought be the case)

dasyatidprime 19 minutes ago | parent

“generally”? I live in an area of the USA where AFAIK bicycles are officially dual-mode and allowed to be on both roads and sidewalks, and have been on both sides of pedestrian/bicycle encounters on sidewalks in the past, without any major issue.

From the article it sounds like the Pennsylvania legislature has already considered the case of delivery robots specifically and decided that they should go on the sidewalk, though to what degree that reflects the popular will is unknown to me.

zx8080 18 minutes ago | parent

> robots on wheels.

Robots owners got big bucks which means power. They need ROI, not sidewalks (also, guess do they use sidewalks or cars?).

AnotherGoodName 28 minutes ago | parent

I feel it would be easier to win with patience. An occasional human stands in front of the bot for so long that you have time to call the cops and have them removed?

Well at that point you could probably just re-order (no big deal in the grand scheme of things, it's not a widespread issue), send another bot and have that bot just stare them down right?

I really don't get the need for police intervention here. It's the same way you win against an obstinate child in such a scenario. Patience. Who in this delivery company escalated like this? Why? Has this been worth the negative press over just "hey reorder the takeaway and send another bot"?

nikanj 28 minutes ago | parent

Having humans do automateable jobs just to keep them employed is perhaps the worst waste of human potential. Why not replace backhoes with shovels - or spoons! I think we should strive to free our greatest resource, ourselves, to focus on avenues a robot cannot do

sicktriple 21 minutes ago | parent

I'm sorry but this is deranged. The vast majority of people don't give a shit about their human potential, they just want a comfortable life spent with family and friends. If the LinkedIn lunatics and EAs get their vision of the future, the world will be full of poor, downwardly mobile, highly educated people, proletarianizing massive swaths of the developed world, leading to a huge increase of crime and misery. And for what? Number go up? Who fucking cares?

d4mi3n 19 minutes ago | parent

I see this argument a lot, and it’s not wrong, but it omits the fact that in the USA we tie a lot of meaning and worth to what people do for a living. It’s going to be hard to get people to buy in to having their jobs automated if they see no path to finding some other source of meaningful employment. This will remain true until such a time that we don’t tie somebody’s societal worth to their ability to be productive.

(This also ignores all the fun things about work culture in the USA, like healthcare being tied to your job.)

panarky 16 minutes ago | parent

That's how luddism works, you attack symbols that you can reach, when the root cause is unreachable or even unknown to you.

hardbass 14 minutes ago | parent

Ludditism is a civilization ending disease. If we don't control it we will never get cures for major diseases, travel to the stars, etc.

nikanj 13 minutes ago | parent

But at least we get jobs!

mlyle 10 minutes ago | parent

I think we should automate more of deliveries.

But I think we should also make deliberate choices to keep humans and human meaning in many things, even if they are less "efficient" by some chosen metric.

Automation and mechanization is desirable to the point that it serves core human wishes and desires-- and through some kind of global/social metric, not that it serve individual humans at the expense of everyone else.

hardbass 8 minutes ago | parent

Its never immediately obvious. Computers put thousands of human calculators out of jobs. Now computers superpowered any and all physical modeling, molecule searches, etc. But, should we have decided eg astronomers or microscopists are required to have jobs, then we wouldn't have developed automated high quality optics, which themselves were required to commoditize computers. Almost all technologies somehow play a role directly or indirectly that existed before a new one for any new advance.

conartist6 15 minutes ago | parent

I don't think it's that awful that there be honest labor. There is a great deal of creativity that is not possible without self-sufficiency: https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-blue-collar-jobs-of-phil...

hardbass 13 minutes ago | parent

What is "honest labor"?

ang_cire 12 minutes ago | parent

Were that the goal of the companies pushing this automation, you'd be 100% right, but they're not going to shift to UBI so you can do art instead of delivering food, they're going to just hoover up as much money from a market as they can and leave people destitute.

sigmar 1 minute ago | parent

Agree it results in lots of wasted human hours, not to mention the amount of death and pollution delivery vehicles cause.

I'd like to extend this quote from Stephen Jay Gould:

>I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops [and driving cars to deliver burritos]

roenxi 27 minutes ago | parent

What this woman is allowed to do makes up a complex topic; there are arguments in all directions. But if her scheme for improving the world involves foremost delaying some people's lunch then she should put some time into coming up with a better plan. Ginning up attention by being unusually petty isn't going to be the path to world peace and prosperity.

throwitaway222 20 minutes ago | parent

While I agree on the surface this seems pretty annoying in general. But deeper, she was able to accomplish 10000000x more than just posting an angry post on the internet about these bots. Unfortunately however, sometimes people are just seeking attention. We'll have to see where it goes.

browningstreet 15 minutes ago | parent

Sometimes one can feel like your only action is a little one.

saagarjha 12 minutes ago | parent

When people protest by bringing out the guillotine it is of course too violent and unbridled. When they block bridges then there are ambulances people might die in. When they pour paint on art it destroys priceless works. Now, when someone delays the Uber robot, it causes someone to get their lunch cold. One wonders if effective protest can only be done by sitting quietly at home, so as not to harm anyone or anything.

analognoise 7 minutes ago | parent

The French students form of protest has already yielded concessions.

janalsncm 9 minutes ago | parent

The first step to improving something is to show there’s a problem in the first place. For those who believe sidewalks are for people, she has demonstrated that there is a problem.

p-e-w 8 minutes ago | parent

The big picture here is that government thugs dragging a person away is now the default response to essentially any type of social disruption, pretty much everywhere in the world.

This would have been unthinkable 200 years ago, during a time we are trained to think of as much more barbaric than the present.

lelandfe 8 minutes ago | parent

Much protest involves affecting everyday people. The 1970 anti-war strike in the US saw students block interstate traffic for hours, which is this on steroids. https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/in-1970-students-mad...

The non-violent aspects of the civil rights movement also featured in so many ways what might be seen as "petty" disruptions of every day life.

...Not to say that blocking a delivery robot is an apt comparison to getting out of nam, or racial equality. Just that petty disruption is a time-honored tradition of protest in the US.

adventure331 26 minutes ago | parent

A group of people decided to put machines out there in the streets. Did we collectively decide this or is it just out there? Because at this point I don’t know anymore. Not only they put out there, there is legal enforcement surrounding it.

I can’t see this going well short term. Long term, maybe.

nikanj 16 minutes ago | parent

90% of road space is given the cars. Where was the vote to put cars on the roads?

adventure331 10 minutes ago | parent

I don’t know if there was one, I’m guessing there wasn’t.

But my point, as I also said in another related comment, is that I think we should vote more often, voting for people representing us is not enough. One size does not fit all.

hardbass 15 minutes ago | parent

Should count legally as cars, if someone tries to follow it and block it, the operator could file a harassment or other suitable case.

eutropia 25 minutes ago | parent

It sounds more like she was arrested for not following an order given by the police officer to move out of the way of the robot.

ryandrake 23 minutes ago | parent

Is it a lawful order to command a person who is not committing a crime to move from a public sidewalk she has every right to be on?

asdfasgasdgasdg 18 minutes ago | parent

Police can definitely order you to stop obstructing a public right of way.

ryandrake 16 minutes ago | parent

But she was not obstructing the right of way. Presumably people could move around her. It's not illegal to stand on the sidewalk. It's possible they might try to stretch (IMO bogus) "loitering" laws to get her, but doing so would make their intentions crystal clear.

asdfasgasdgasdg 13 minutes ago | parent

At least in my state it doesn’t matter if people can go around you. If you’re there to intentionally obstruct human or vehicle traffic on a sidewalk, you are guilty of disorderly conduct. Doesn’t matter whether you’re standing still, moving, blocking the whole sidewalk or just part of it. What matters is your state of mind and purpose.

conartist6 2 minutes ago | parent

Just out of curiosity, can anyone report on how the robots act in terms of right of way? Lets say the sidewalk narrows around an obstacle like a tree or trash can or lime scooter or whatever. If the robot approaches the constriction at the same time as an elderly pedestrian, how does it behave? Will it pause instead of entering? Will it back up a bit when a human would do so to be polite? Will it crowd in someone walking with a cane? In short, what are these things like to be around?

throwitaway222 11 minutes ago | parent

> Presumably people could move around her

But if she was doing the same thing to humans as she was to the robot, they couldn't move around her (assuming that means re-positioning herself every time they try to go around) - and I think most people would agree that arresting her would be a good thing.

So the next question is, are all users of the sidewalk (as long as they're using it roughly the same way, which is temporary and quick pass through) deserve to have the same rights as a human?

My previous comment doesn't seem to align with this one, but mostly because I'm mixed on this.

handoflixue 11 minutes ago | parent

As an analogy, consider doing this to a person and trying that same excuse.

I suppose if the robot literally cannot path around someone standing still, it might be a valid excuse? But as soon as you're actively moving to block it, it is obviously obstruction.

Judges get to run off common sense, not programmer logic - the point of the law is that public paths ought to be usable by anyone for lawful purposes, and currently "delivery robot" is a lawful purpose.

rootusrootus 12 minutes ago | parent

Did he tell her to move off the sidewalk? Or did he tell her to stay where she was and let the robot navigate around her?

delecti 15 minutes ago | parent

The police do not have unlimited power to order us around.

Quote from a lawyer in the article:

> Personal delivery devices must yield to other pedestrians and pedalcyclists in a pedestrian area

Sounds like the robot legally had to yield to her. If so, what lawful basis would the officer have had to make the order?

mlyle 13 minutes ago | parent

Just because something must yield to you doesn't mean you have an infinite right to obstruct it.

It's quite possible (and likely!) for you simultaneously to have an obligation to yield and the other party to have an obligation to not block.

Ylpertnodi 23 minutes ago | parent

So, she was arrested for disobeying the cops instructions to move out of the way of the robot.

conartist6 8 minutes ago | parent

Yes. But when you act in protest, the goal is usually to gain attention.

Now the story is that the police came and protected an innocent robot by chaining up an old woman. That sure makes them seem like misanthropes.

sicktriple 19 minutes ago | parent

> “I was under the impression that I had more rights than the robot did,” Marvin said, laughing.

Its not the robot you have less rights than, but the corporation. Cops' job is to do their bidding.

dingaling 12 minutes ago | parent

What a marvellously ironic name for someone dealing with a recalcitrant robot.

rootusrootus 11 minutes ago | parent

What about the recipient of the food, where do they factor in?

relaxing 6 minutes ago | parent

Consumer protections have been roundly rejected by the current administration.

onraglanroad 6 minutes ago | parent

Here I am, brain the size of a planet and I have to move for a delivery drone. And I have this awful pain in the diodes down my right side. Life? Don't tell me about life.

ungreased0675 12 minutes ago | parent

I don’t want robots on the sidewalk because I guarantee they won’t move out of the way of people jogging, kids riding bikes, older people, etc. They’re moving obstacles. Delivery drones are a more respectful option, as long as they’re quiet like the Zipline ones Walmart uses.

dofm 12 minutes ago | parent

Tragedy of the pavements on which you used to be able to walk to the Common.

chaostheory 10 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

uncomputation 10 minutes ago | parent

The scape goating of delivery robots (vandalism, destruction, or obstruction) as trying to stick it to Big Tech and “capitalism” is an immediate tell of an underdeveloped political education. She certainly must be a communications professor.

rjbwork 10 minutes ago | parent

Sorry, the commons are the exclusive domain of private corporate profit, not for humans to occupy.

hebleb 3 minutes ago | parent

I work in Philly where this happened. I consider myself a pretty mild mannered person, but even I get an urge to kick these things while walking home during rush hour on busy sidewalks lol. They are mostly harmless though

kstenerud 3 minutes ago | parent

There's a difference between not giving way to a robot vs spending 10-15 minutes actively blocking it.

Yes, we're going to quickly come to a head on the issue of robots on sidewalks, much like we have with e-scooters, or Google's ill-fated bikes.

The robots open a new possibility on an existing system (sidewalks), which is going to lead to problems from both sides until the legislature comes up with new rules. This is how free and democratic societies work.

tashian 2 minutes ago | parent

In the 1920s, "jay" was a slur similar to "country bumpkin" — an unsophisticated person who didn't understand the city. As cars became more common, the term "jaywalker" emerged, and the auto industry's PR arm seized on it and eventually helped it codify into law. Before jaywalking was a thing, newspapers blamed drivers for accidents, assuming people had the right to walk anywhere (as they always had) and cars needed to yield. It didn't take long for the auto industry — makers of the hottest new technology in the world — to convince their friends in the media to flip the narrative and start shaming pedestrians for getting in the way of cars.

SenHeng 2 minutes ago | parent

The real story hidden somewhere down below

> In the aftermath of her arrest, Marvin has found out more about the legal infrastructure that protects robots. In 2020, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that classifies autonomous delivery robots — what the law calls “personal delivery devices” — as pedestrians, not vehicles. Democrats, along with labor unions and accessibility advocates, largely opposed the law on the basis that legalizing delivery robots could kill jobs and endanger children and pedestrians; Republicans touted it as an exciting technological advancement.

> The law means that a vehicle must yield to a delivery robot on crosswalks, just as it would to a person