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She’s not going to let the robots take over without a fight.
A retired University of Pennsylvania professor was hauled away by cops after staging a one-woman blockade against an Uber Eats delivery robot — and she’s vowing to keep raging against the machines despite her brush with the law.
Carolyn Marvin, 78, was arrested on Wednesday after planting herself in the path an autonomous food delivery bot in Philadelphia and refusing to budge, according to Philly Voice.
Cops reportedly asked the determined senior “multiple times” to get out of the way and let the machine go about its business.
But Marvin wasn’t moving.
Instead of backing down, she ended up in cuffs, slapped with a disorderly conduct charge.
Her beef with the bots — they’re taking jobs from humans.
Marvin has been waging a personal war against the delivery machines for months, accusing the corporations behind them of putting flesh-and-blood workers out of business “in order to enrich their own bottom line.”
“I know they’re taking the jobs of human delivery workers and so, I have been protesting them whenever I saw them by standing in front of them and preventing them from going forward,” Marvin said.
And this wasn’t a one-time showdown.
The feisty ex-professor — who taught a class in freedom of expression at Penn — said she’s confronted sidewalk cyborgs on many occasions, and the arrest won’t stop her.
In fact, she plans to contest the charges.
“I think it’s my First Amendment right to publicly demonstrate on a sidewalk to protest against delivery robots,” Ms. Marvin told WPVI-TV.
She went on to say it’s part of being an American citizen.
“I’m exercising the rights of my citizenship, so I think of it in those terms.”
Meanwhile, her robot rebellion has sparked a battle of its own online.
“Some heroines don’t wear capes,” one admirer cheered.
“Should have destroyed the robot,” another declared.
But not everyone was rooting for the anti-robot crusader.
“Stopping it from bringing people they medicine is a crime!” one critic fumed.
“Robotic Karen,” someone slammed.
Still, Marvin isn’t letting the backlash — or her arrest — short circuit her mission.
She says she intends to keep confronting the bots wherever she spots them, and hopes her sidewalk shenanigans will encourage people to talk about the future of human jobs.
“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.”
The robots, built by tech company Avride, have been making Uber Eats deliveries in parts of Philadelphia since March.