THE FIRST TIME I NOTICED a delivery robot in Echo Park, where I live, I decided to follow it.
It was the end of June. Immigration arrests tripled that month compared with the same period in 2024. Los Angeles was rattled from the heightened presence of federal law enforcement. A few weeks earlier, people had gathered downtown to protest the ICE raids on restaurants, car washes, and other worksites. Hundreds had taken to the streets in solidarity with communities facing detention and deportation, and some of the most widely shared images from these demonstrations showed Waymo vehicles tagged with graffiti and set aflame. It was around this same time that the autonomous ride-hail service, a division of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, expanded its geo-fenced area to include my neighborhood.
Los Angeles was being used as a “test case,” Mayor Karen Bass said in response to the thousands of members of the National Guard and hundreds of marines who occupied the city over the summer. You could say the same about the presence of these robots and robo-taxis popping up on …