Waving flags, chanting slogans, and marching in circles, around 30 robots took to the streets of Warsaw on Monday to campaign for AI regulation in front of the Polish digital affairs ministry.
The protest was organised by Democratism, an initiative that, according to its website, aims to launch debate on how AI and robotisation affect the labour market.
One of the AI-powered humanoid robots, Agibot A3, told AFP that the robots were present to demonstrate that the technology was already a reality.
Chants including “Defend workplaces”, “Time for rules”, and “Don’t wait, regulate” played on loudspeakers as the robots, which ranged from bipedal humanoids to dog-like quadrupeds, demonstrated.
The organiser, Grzegorz Kulis, told AFP that the protest was aimed particularly at raising concerns about the potential replacement of people by humanoid robots and artificial intelligence in cognitive work.
Kulis warned that failure to act immediately could soon create a problem and stressed the need for rules and regulations to protect workers.
He said the use of robots was also intended to attract public attention and demonstrate their existing capabilities, highlighting the urgency of the situation.
According to Kulis, the robots were already capable of moving around freely and had demonstrated this by taking part in the protest.
The marching robots were visited by Poland’s Digital Affairs Minister, Krzysztof Gawkowski, who spoke with Kulis at the protest site.
Gawkowski said uncontrolled AI models integrated into humanoid robots, which would continue to evolve as robotisation advances, posed a major problem.
Kulis, who is now the CIO of a robotics company and CEO of an employment agency, previously served two terms on the Labor Market Council at the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy.
He told AFP that the organisers felt responsible for informing society about the rapid and dynamic technological changes, which he said personally frightened them.
In July, Poland’s conservative-nationalist President Karol Nawrocki signed into law a bill introduced by the ministry to implement the EU’s AI Act.
The law created a national authority capable of enforcing existing EU regulations, which had already formally come into force.