Delivery robots are spreading across LA. Residents ‘both pity and hate them’; The Guardian, May 25, 2026

Matthew Cantor, The Guardian; Delivery robots are spreading across LA. Residents ‘both pity and hate them’

[Kip Currier: My Bloomsbury book Ethics, Information, and Technology explores positive and negative features of delivery robots, like the Los Angeles-based ones discussed in this Guardian article.

Pittsburgh has, for example, experimented with using these technologies (referred to as Personal Delivery Devices [PDDs]) in some of its neighborhoods for delivering library books, prescription medications, and food. In 2020, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's legislature revised its state code to make it easier for companies to deploy these devices in Pennsylvania municipalities by classifying PDDs as "pedestrians". See 2021 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article Bloomfield residents raise concerns about sharing sidewalk space with delivery robots.

The book also investigates ethical issues involving other kinds of robots -- companion, helper, security, military -- autonomous vehicles, and drones.]

"Robots have taken over Los Angeles.

It’s not just the AI-generated videos that have caused angst in Hollywood. Our streets are full of driverless Waymo vehicles, covered in more sensors and gadgets than the Batmobile. And our walkways are home to fleets of boxes on wheels, hurrying past pedestrians and navigating outdoor bar-hoppers as the robots deliver smoothies and keto-friendly salads.

And it’s only getting stranger. This month, Serve Robotics, one of the leading companies behind the food-delivery bots, deployed another 500 of them in 40 neighborhoods across the city, up from two neighborhoods in 2023. The other big company, Coco Robotics, founded at UCLA in 2020, has about 300 robots across the city and is looking to expand. Soon a region already known for its lack of walkability will have more obstacles for pedestrians to contend with."

On roads teeming with robotaxis, crossing the street can be harrowing; The Washington Post, December 30, 2024

 Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post; On roads teeming with robotaxis, crossing the street can be harrowing

"When I try to cross my street at a marked crosswalk, the Waymo robotaxis often wouldn’t yield to me. I would step out into the white-striped pavement, look at the Waymo, wait to see whether it’s going to stop — and the car would zip right past.

It cut me off again and again on the path I use to get to work and take my kids to the park. It happened even when I was stuck in a small median halfway across the road. So I began using my phone to film myself crossing. I documented more than a dozen Waymo cars failing to yield in the span of a week. (You can watch some of my recordings below.)

It is a cautionary tale about how AI, intended to make us more safe, also needs to learn how to coexist with us. The experience has taught my family that the safest place around an autonomous vehicle is inside it, not walking around it...

What’s more, how does an AI designed to follow the law learn how to break it?...

 showed my videos to outside experts, too. Phil Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who conducts research on autonomous-vehicle safety, said Waymo had no excuse not to stop."