Robots “protest” in Warsaw to demand regulation of AI and automation

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Digital affairs minister Krzysztof Gawkowski met with the demonstrators, telling them that his department is working on regulations. However, one of the organisers said that plans currently being discussed by parliament contain insufficient protection for workers.

Standing in several rows, the robots waved Polish flags and chanted slogans such as “We want regulations, we want rules, we want law” and “Don’t wait, regulate, protect jobs”.

The organisers, a group called Democratism, said the event was intended to highlight the need for debate and legislation before automation has a more profound impact on employment.

“Some people will benefit from new opportunities, while others may need to retrain or adapt to completely different roles,” they wrote. Society needs to discuss “who is responsible for preparing people for these changes, how workers should be protected during the transition and how reskilling should work”.

Democratism appears to have been launched shortly before the protest, with the announcement about the demonstration among the first material published on its social media accounts. The initiative was launched by Delta Robots, a company that rents robots for events.

However, a website they have set up to gather support for greater debate over the impact of AI and robotisation has so far only obtained signatures from 61 people.

Grzegorz Kuliś of Delta Robots admitted to news website Gazeta.pl that their “campaign also has public relations value” for the company.

However, he added that, “even though we’re deploying robots, we’re also humans, and we have a whole host of concerns that, if we don’t regulate this, we’ll soon find ourselves in an unprecedented situation that no human being will be able to cope with”.

“We are constantly debating the impact of migrants on our society, whilst the vast majority of ‘migrants’ will arrive either via undersea cables across the Atlantic in the form of AI agents, or as humanoid robots in shipping containers from China,” he warned.

Gawkowski, who went out to address the organisers, said the ministry’s objectives were aligned with the protesters’ concerns. “People come first, and that is what matters most to us,” he said, quoted by broadcaster Eska.

The minister also announced plans to establish a committee on AI development and safety as well as to introduce so-called sandboxes, where companies will be able to test AI solutions before deploying them more widely, reports local news website O!Polska.

Kuliś, however, told Gazeta.pl that a draft law on AI systems currently being considered by the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, contains too little practical protection for workers affected by automation.

The rapid development of AI and robotics has sparked debate around the world on how such technologies will impact humans, including to what extent and in what ways they will replace human labour.

However, a number of recent reports have found that the impact of AI on jobs has so far been smaller than many previously predicted. Analysis by the Institute of Economic Policy Research at Stanford University, published in July, found that “AI’s effects on overall employment are likely small”.

A further concern has been the prospect of AI “going rogue” by starting to act without or beyond human control. Those fears were strengthened after it emerged in July this year that some of OpenAI’s AI agents had autonomously hacked Hugging Face, another AI company.

The incident prompted more than 100 companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Hugging Face, to sign an open letter calling on companies and governments to step up cybersecurity efforts amid emerging threats.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Michal Borowczyk / Agencja Wyborcza

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She has written for Clean Energy Wire and The Times, and she hosts her own podcast, The Warsaw Wire, on Poland’s economy and energy sector. She previously worked for Reuters.