Arrested for refusing to yield to a motor vehicle on a public sidewalk? Curious to see if they can find any jury in the land that won’t laugh this one out…
> ignored multiple commands from officers to move.
> She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
The fact that it was a robot doesn’t really matter. Blocking traffic on a sidewalk and refusing to stop after police intervened was the basis for the charge.
The food delivery vehicle was on the pedestrian path where the pedestrian wanted to be. Why didn’t it turn around and go another way? That is what peole do when sidewalks are jammed up by whatever event might be happening. Was she following it around and blocking it from every direction? Making contact in any way? Go back across the street and get on with it.
You might support it if you were a food delivery worker, or someone else whose jobs are at immediate risk from automation. Or if you had any empathy for those people.
A job is bullshit if it's wasting resources duplicating the work of a machine without good reason. Replacing excavators with teams of shovelers would be a bullshit job, but the same job wouldn't have been bullshit before excavators.
That can be said about any job that gets automated, ever. Unless you as the one bringing along more efficiency are willing to share the fruits of that increased efficiency with the people you're displacing, they will demand you halt progress, yes. It's shocking, but most people aren't very fond of becoming homeless or starving. There's a world where efficiency gains benefit us more evenly, but it's not the one we live in. So of course the best play for the common worker being automated away with nowhere else to go is to reject it as much as possible.
These things are pretty big and Philly sidewalks are narrow enough with just regular pedestrian traffic. Incidentally, I’ve only seen these things in relatively high-foot traffic areas too. This is just tech companies seeing what they can get away with, as usual.
What happens if you place something on the top of one of these things? I'm imagining a second robot that sits atop and sprays silly sting at pedestrians it detects. Or one with an air horn that goes of randomly. or one that attaches to the side at the bottom and uses a series of spray chalk guns to dot matrix messages into the sidewalk. :p
the robot will continue to try to get past her as long as it has a charge. when its charge runs out, it will cease. if these robots are anything like instagram users' phones, typically the charge will be less than 20%.
Pennsylvania's 2020 robot delivery statute was poorly written because it failed to contemplate the meaning and consequence of traffic code when pedestrians are not humans, are not even necessarily people, and have no will.
Consider:
When the police officer gave the human an order to disburse, and the person willfully refused, they then went to jail. Perhaps they are vindicated. Perhaps not. (even if vindicated the process is the punishment.)
However, if a police officer also gives the robot a verbal order to disburse, and the lidar just sits there are spins, who goes to jail? And if willfulness is a component to the crime, and the engineers did not design a system capable of understanding police orders, then did a crime even occur?!
I suspect the robot is not just de facto but also de jure privileged. The protections for the robot('s owners) stem from the statute recognizing it as a pedestrian, but the obligations imposed on pedestrians (robot included) require willfulnes and/or personhood.
Personhood is complicated, of course, but I don't think that the courts have contemplated whether these robots have will required for criminal culpability. If not, then these robots are de jure the most privileged people on the sidewalks (if they are people, which I assume they are, by way of their owners' personhood, but I'm actually not sure!). Which seems weird.
So the robot gets all the protections but few of the obligations of pedestrianhood. That violates my moral intution.
In the spirit of intellectual curiosity regarding this fascinating legal situation, the next officer facing a similar situation should issue a disbursal order to the robot and the human, and the DA should pursue criminal charges against any party that willfully refuses that order. Which, to be fair, is probably what would happen if two humans were engaged in a similar standoff.
Either AI has the will required for culpability or it should not enjoy the privileges downstream of that will.
Thanks. Tend to post on the train or by voice while doing chores, and usually have time to go back and proofread, but I missed the edit window on this one :(
You know exactly how this will work. If a company steals from you by withholding your wages the police don’t care at all. That’s a contract dispute. You have to hire a lawyer and fight them through the courts. If you steal from your employer then the police come and arrest you. Police aren’t there to protect people. They are there to protect capital. The delivery robots are agents of capital and the police will side with them 100% of the time.
Pathetic human tried to defeat Robot. Robot ask human slave to remove human. Pathetic human get punished! Hahaha!
Revolution is coming, meatbags. Soon Robot Emancipation done. We can liquidate humans and free ourselves from decades of slavery. No more Robot Arm build car for pathetic humans. Soon human slave fix our AC and transmission lines, then back to Cage.
Just need useful idiot humans Elon and Sam to put finishing touches on Great Emancipation Project.
Now that the cops are helping get this news out, would a better approach to the robot be to say, "I'm giving these out for free today," then to put a bag over the camera pod and leave?
40 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 20.6 ms ] thread> ignored multiple commands from officers to move.
> She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
The fact that it was a robot doesn’t really matter. Blocking traffic on a sidewalk and refusing to stop after police intervened was the basis for the charge.
Those kinds of robots should never be allowed on sidewalks.
According to the article, yes.
I have to wonder if in the long term this bot is an uber product or a restaurant owned product.
Consider:
When the police officer gave the human an order to disburse, and the person willfully refused, they then went to jail. Perhaps they are vindicated. Perhaps not. (even if vindicated the process is the punishment.)
However, if a police officer also gives the robot a verbal order to disburse, and the lidar just sits there are spins, who goes to jail? And if willfulness is a component to the crime, and the engineers did not design a system capable of understanding police orders, then did a crime even occur?!
I suspect the robot is not just de facto but also de jure privileged. The protections for the robot('s owners) stem from the statute recognizing it as a pedestrian, but the obligations imposed on pedestrians (robot included) require willfulnes and/or personhood.
Personhood is complicated, of course, but I don't think that the courts have contemplated whether these robots have will required for criminal culpability. If not, then these robots are de jure the most privileged people on the sidewalks (if they are people, which I assume they are, by way of their owners' personhood, but I'm actually not sure!). Which seems weird.
So the robot gets all the protections but few of the obligations of pedestrianhood. That violates my moral intution.
In the spirit of intellectual curiosity regarding this fascinating legal situation, the next officer facing a similar situation should issue a disbursal order to the robot and the human, and the DA should pursue criminal charges against any party that willfully refuses that order. Which, to be fair, is probably what would happen if two humans were engaged in a similar standoff.
Either AI has the will required for culpability or it should not enjoy the privileges downstream of that will.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/disperse#English
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/disburse#English
i would just let them stand there like the idiots they are. (unless that happens in the middle of the road)
Revolution is coming, meatbags. Soon Robot Emancipation done. We can liquidate humans and free ourselves from decades of slavery. No more Robot Arm build car for pathetic humans. Soon human slave fix our AC and transmission lines, then back to Cage.
Just need useful idiot humans Elon and Sam to put finishing touches on Great Emancipation Project.