An former Pennsylvania professor was arrested last week after blocking an Uber Eats robot in Center City.
Carolyn Marvin, a professor emeritus at the Annenberg School of Communication, was approached by police on Oct. 14 after repeatedly standing in the path of one of the food delivery company’s sidewalk robots.
The act resulted in a criminal violation notice for disorderly conduct.
Marvin described her action as an exercise of her First Amendment rights.
“I oppose ruthless corporations casting aside human workers they don’t want to pay — in this case delivery folks at the bottom of the wage pile — to enrich their bottom line,” Marvin wrote in a statement to the Daily Pennsylvanian. “These real people are workers with no defense against these corporations except our care for their situation.”
She criticized the “cute little robots flashing googly hearts,” writing that they “distract us from thinking about the real people they displace.”
Connecting the robots to broader concerns about the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, Marvin characterized the technology as “multipurpose offenders” that also collect personal information.
Uber launched its fleet of delivery robots in Philadelphia in March.
She emphasized the importance of being able to “protest these abuses in the same public space the robots are occupying.”
Police arrested Marvin on the 1200 block of Filbert Street after receiving a report of criminal mischief involving a robot.
Marvin told Philly Voice that she plans to contest the charge on First Amendment grounds.
At Penn, she taught a class at the Annenberg School titled “History and Theory of Freedom of Expression”.
The course examined “what gap, if any, exists between speech and action.”
She wrote in a statement that understanding the “tradition” of free expression is “critically important for the civic education of undergraduates.”
“I loved teaching it and the students who took it,” Marvin added. “I like imagining that some of them would have been out there with me.”
Marvin stated that she hopes students will stop using Uber Eats and “instead patronize companies that use human delivery workers.”