Standing in the way of slop bowls: the woman blocking food delivery robots

“One of you needs to be on the lookout for cops, while I block the robot, OK?”

It is a crisp fall morning in Philadelphia. Tucked away in a dingy alley, opposite a garage called Patriot Parking, 78-year-old Carolyn Marvin is laying out some ground rules for a robot-disrupting expedition. Once a suitable target is identified, we will follow it to a busy sidewalk and Marvin will stand in front of the robot, blocking its way. The photographer and I will take turns ensuring we’re not all carted off by the police.

If Marvin sounds like she’s done this before, it’s because she has. Many, many times. The semi-retired University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) communications professor has become something of a local celebrity after taking it upon herself to block the UberEats food delivery robots which have become a ubiquitous presence in the city’s downtown. She doesn’t do this every day – “I have a life” – but whenever a robot crosses her path she’ll stare it down as a protest against their incursion into public spaces.

Her antics have gone viral: so much so that some Philadelphians dressed up as Marvin and the robot for Halloween. But while she may have supporters, her protesting isn’t universally admired: a few weeks ago it got her in trouble with the law.

“I was coming back from my flu shot and I saw a robot,” she recounts. “Since I had some time, I stayed in front of it as it was a very highly trafficked area.” A crowd amassed and a spirited debate occurred. Some people agreed with Marvin’s argument that, along with taking people’s jobs, the delivery robots pose a hazard to people with mobility issues. Others were concerned that she was stopping someone from getting the food they’d ordered and paid for. Eventually the cops were called about “criminal mischief” involving a delivery robot and three officers showed up.

“They asked me to move and I said ‘no, it’s my first amendment to protest against corporations in the same public space the robots are occupying.’ So I don’t see any reason to stop that.” The police officers, presumably a bit befuddled by the small but serious professor, who was dressed in her trademark blue visor, continued to try to get her to move along. Marvin just kept staring at the robot.

“So then they came up from behind me, took the food I was holding out of my hands, handcuffed me and hustled me over to a police car,” says Marvin. “I tried to make it hard for them but there were three of them and one of me. But I kept arguing with them. I think they weren’t sure what they could arrest me for because it’s all brand new stuff. And they hesitated a long time because I think the first amendment argument probably made some sense to them.”

The police ended up writing Marvin a ticket for disorderly conduct, with the rationale that she was blocking a business. She is still waiting for her court hearing date, but intends to contest the charges vigorously. “The wheels of justice grind slow, but I’ll go make my arguments,” she says. And one imagines these arguments will be convincing. Marvin has written a celebrated book, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, about the social impact of electronic media. She is a formidable thinker who, in 1985, became the first woman to receive tenure at UPenn’s Annenberg School and now has an endowed chair named after at the Ivy League university.

A pending court date has not slowed Marvin down. Which is why she agreed to allow me to shadow her today, while she goes about her robot-disrupting business. I’ve picked our rendezvous spot because I’ve noticed that a number of the delivery machines congregate here while waiting for orders. We can trail them the moment they set off on their mission.

It’s unclear exactly how many food delivery robots there are in Philadelphia. Avride, the Texas-based company behind the machines, would only tell me that the number fluctuates according to demand. But there are only two in the alley when we arrive around brunch time. One of them is flashing Halloween graphics on the screen that operates as its “face” and another has little zzz on it, indicating that it’s sleeping. I’ve got to admit, they look cute. And, of course, that’s by design. “Humanizing the robots is important, because they are a completely new entity,” a spokesperson for Avride told me when I called them for an interview a couple of days earlier. “We want people to feel comfortable around the robots and not to feel scared about some weird box travelling down the sidewalk.”

The humanization didn’t fool Marvin, but it seems to have worked on other people. Avride, which operates almost 1,000 food delivery machines on more than 25 different college campuses and a growing number of urban locations including Jersey City and Austin, says it used to get concerned emails from people who’d see a robot in hibernation mode and assume it was lost or broken. Avride then added the zzz visuals to communicate the robot was waiting for an order, and now the emails have stopped. I ask the Avride spokespeople if they have they heard about Carolyn Marvin? There is a little pause. “We are all well aware of this lady, yes.”

As we wait for the robots to get moving, I start to wonder if the professor’s notoriety might have prompted Avride to install Marvin-mode software which disables the machines if they detect her presence. We’ve been hanging around for about 40 minutes and nothing is happening. Eventually, I hear a beeping noise and one of the robots whirs into an action. Someone had put an order in and robot 1617 was going from its holding pen to a nearby restaurant to pick up the food and deliver it.

While it may be equipped with all sorts of sophisticated cameras, sensors, and AI-powered software, the poor robot didn’t have the instincts to realize its mission was about to be thwarted. We chase it down the alley and, as soon as 1617 turns on to Walnut Street, a main thoroughfare, Marvin blocks its pathway and stares it down.

For the first few minutes people politely ignore the professor-robot standoff, although I do notice one woman rolling her eyes as she passes. But then the compliments and questions start rolling in. One elderly woman thanks Marvin profusely. A middle-aged man dressed in a nice suit cheers her on and says “someone’s got to do it!” Another man says he appreciates the efforts and “the gig economy sucks for everyone.”

“OMG,” a young passerby called Cadence says as she recognizes Marvin and her trademark blue visor. “It’s the queen! I feel like I met a celebrity!” Cadence, a 22-year-old recent graduate, is on board with the professor’s protest. “AI and robotics are supposed to make life easier for us and help us do the things we enjoy, not take the jobs of other people,” she effuses. “I will support any small business that doesn’t use AI. I appreciate what is made by humans.”

Passing kids, meanwhile, seem less concerned about the gig economy, and more interested in the robots’ cute faces. Every toddler who goes by points at them with delight. A couple of kids who pass have a heated discussion about whether the robot looks like a dog or a cat. (It looks like neither.) The only child we come across who isn’t enthralled looks around seven years old and yells “clanker!” at it. “I’ve watched enough movies to know that these things are going to hunt us down!” he says.

The people cheering Marvin on aren’t outliers: these protests have struck a chord with people because of a growing distrust around AI and automation. According to a recent study by Pew Research, a majority of Americans are deeply skeptical of AI; more adults are expecting it to have a negative impact than a positive one. And while I’m not sure if other people are blocking food delivery robots, we’re certainly seeing a rise in protests against datacenters and other symbols of automation. A few weeks ago in Philadelphia I passed a woman standing in front of a Waymo self-driving taxi (which is being tested in the city with human safety drivers) blocking its path and yelling “LAME-O”.

Despite this antipathy, robots are gradually being normalized. Pennsylvania legalized delivery robots via Act 106 of 2020, defining them as “pedestrians” and they’re slowly becoming part of the landscape. When Avride’s robots first appeared in Philadelphia back in March people would gawk at them and take selfies. Now most people just ignore them. And this same phenomenon is happening all across the world. While it isn’t clear exactly how many food delivery robots are in operation there are a number of companies besides Avride which operate these machines in the US, including Serve Robotics, which is one of the biggest players, with a fleet of 2,000 deployed robots.

While the automation industry has big plans to grow their fleets of robots, Marvin stages these protests because she wants to remind people that they have a say in all of this. They have a right to weigh in on whether private robots should be allowed on public streets.

“I’m very supportive of the kinds of things that AI is doing in terms of medical breakthroughs,” Marvin says. “And I think robots are fine on factory floors, but they don’t belong in public space. I take the position that this isn’t inevitable. But you have to have the will to do something. In Toronto they banned delivery robots from sidewalks in 2021. And I think, you know, the question is: who is public infrastructure designed to serve?”

The robot in front of Marvin isn’t (yet) smart enough to answer to this question. But it does seem to have clocked that it’s not going to be able to get to the restaurant to pick up its food today. After repeatedly trying to get around the professor it seems to have gone into hibernation mode. Eventually Marvin, who has to go to campus and prepare for a class, steps aside. The robot powers back up and trundles home to its garage. I know it’s only a computer with wheels, but I could swear it looked dejected. Marvin, on the other hand, looks triumphant.