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Waymo exec reveals company uses remote workers in the Philippines
- almosthere 8mo agoSo,... isn't it illegal to do that. If someone in the Philippines does not have a CA/AZ/Whatever driver's license - then Waymo is breaking the law. It's probably worse than that. It also proves that Waymo's capabilities are overstated. I keep getting pushback when I complain about specific situations in this forum about how Waymo thinks about complex situations - and this entire time, it may have been humans navigating them.
- tredre3 8mo agoForeigners can drive in California without a California license. But it's important to note that in this situation they're not driving at all (the latency would make that unfeasible). They're there to disambiguate complicated situations and point the car in the right direction. Try to not let clickbait headlines shape your view of a situation.
- estimator7292 8mo agoNo. In general if you hold a valid license from your officially recognized locality, you can drive in the US. Did you think we just don't allow foreigners to drive ever?
- ryukoposting 8mo agoI watched a recording of the hearing. It sounds a lot like the Amazon Fresh thing, at a glance, but it's not. Amazon admitted that they had a bunch of people in India looking at the camera feeds and validating orders post-facto. The media took this as "the Indian workers are processing your Amazon Fresh purchase, not the computers" which is disingenuous at best. And yeah, it sounds like Waymos usually, nearly always are fully autonomous. The huge, gargantuan, enormous difference is that, in Waymo's case, the overseas folks are taking control of a fucking car. That's not post-facto like the Amazon thing. And, more importantly, the ramifications of even the tiniest mistake are massive by comparison. Indian Amazon guy screws up? Shoot, I paid for two heads of lettuce when I only got one. Filipino Waymo guy screws up? Car accident. By the way: Imagine driving a real, actual car with trans-oceanic ping.
- verdverm 8mo ago> taking control of a fucking car they aren't though, they are clicking waypoints on a map
- ddol 8mo agoThe remote assistance (fleet response) team cannot directly control the car: > The Waymo Driver evaluates the input from fleet response and independently remains in control of driving. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response
- teach 8mo agoI've seen this story making the rounds, but this isn't news, is it? All self-driving companies maintain teams that make a decision when the cars get confused or stuck, and they report the number of such handoffs to NHTSA. Is it just that there are teams in the Philippines specifically?
- alephnerd 8mo agoPartially, but also as an easy attack on "bad big tech" and AI - it wins votes right as primary season starts gearing up [1] during what is being treated by both the DNC and the GOP as a highly competitive election [0]. Ed Markey is going to face a severely harsh primary this election cycle (as are other incumbents in both parties this season). [0] - https://www.axios.com/2026/02/06/gop-senate-midterms-2026 https://www.axios.com/2026/02/06/gop-senate-midterms-2026 [1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OOwRbOK93ag https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OOwRbOK93ag
- stcredzero 8mo agoThere was a big to-do made about this by one senator(?) during the hearing. Same old same old. Some of them actually know stuff. Others are examples of 20th century "Artificial Intelligence." (Got briefed by their staff.)
- OgsyedIE 8mo agoIt's the question of whether these teams are composed of people who can pass a driving test in Waymo's areas of operation. I would be doubtful that they aren't but there appears to be no way for external verification of any kind.
- jeffbee 8mo agoThe remote operators are not called upon to answer matters of law.
- Retric 8mo agoMoving a car on public streets is a matter of law even if the car is interpreting moderately high level directions like make a U turn here. Especially as the car is already having issues when they takeover.
- eykanal 8mo agoEr, this was reported by waymo themselves nearly two years ago: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response
- stcredzero 8mo agoIt's been speculated: Is this why there was that debacle with multiple Waymos in intersections during the recent blackout?
- yorwba 8mo agoWaymo reported that too: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/autonomously-navigating-the-real-world https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/autonomously-navigating-the-r... While the Waymo Driver is designed to handle dark traffic signals as four-way stops, it may occasionally request a confirmation check to ensure it makes the safest choice. While we successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday, the outage created a concentrated spike in these requests. This created a backlog that, in some cases, led to response delays contributing to congestion on already-overwhelmed streets.
- WarmWash 8mo agoAnything for a clickable headline...
- simonw 8mo agoNothing about the Philippines in that.
- ddol 8mo agoWhy does it matter if fleet response sit in Manilla, Miami or Milan? Surely what matters is the architecture: > The Waymo Driver evaluates the input from fleet response and independently remains in control of driving. Waymo tell us that fleet response agents can only provide waypoint suggestions, they don't have steer-by-wire remote control of the vehicle.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- nemothekid 8mo agoThe way this is being reported gives the impression that there are workers in the philippines remotely driving these cars (if they are, maybe google found a good use case for all that Stadia tech). What it actually is, if the car gets stuck someone can manually override - which, I imagine is normal? If the car gets stuck you can call someone and they can do "something", which can probably nudge the car into action. I doubt the latency is that good where someone can remotely drive the car.
- bink 8mo agoWhat I found interesting about this is that on several occasions I've seen Waymos get confused and block intersections (and once Muni tracks). Each time they've sat there for at least 10-15 mins until a police officer showed up and tapped on the window. Then it was another 10-15 mins before the vehicle started to move again. What are these agents doing?
- walkersnice 8mo agoThe police officers operate autonomously 99% of the time, but 1% fall back to a remote worker in the Philippines, sometimes the same agent. Scheduling overheads account for some of the latency. This is all compounded with anything vaguely legal, at which point decisions are escalated to legal support. This has led to a drop in legal disputes, keeps legal costs low, and keeps the courts clear. Surge pricing in SF applies during periods of low agent availability, such as public holidays in the Philippines, or public discontent in other regions of the world. Sorry about the intersection though.
- noupdates 8mo agoI'm guessing it is for situations like should the Waymo stay in a particular lane or switch lanes, try to overtake another car, etc. That's probably the type of "guidance", which seems a lot like optimization.
- ra7 8mo agoThese videos from Waymo shows what kind of guidance they provide: https://youtube.com/watch?v=T0WtBFEfAyo https://youtube.com/watch?v=T0WtBFEfAyo https://youtube.com/watch?v=elpQPbJXpfY https://youtube.com/watch?v=elpQPbJXpfY Notice how the system itself reasons about the scene and asks for help with possible options. This whole story is a nothingburger. The only “news” here is that the operators are in Philippines.
- labrador 8mo agoPeople who think this is a "gotcha!" for Waymo are either not very well educated, not very smart, or both.
- tengbretson 8mo agoWhy is that?
- tehjoker 8mo agoIt's hard to say what this means. They didn't give a single example of the kinds of situations the remote workers help in. I can think of an array of different kinds of situations ranging from "should I continue with this route or turn back" which would be a yes/no dialog box with the car prompting monitoring to real time pedal inputs or emergency stops by people watching the displays constantly. ~~Generally when a company is vague about these things, you should assume there is some very intensive aspect to it undercutting their claims of autonomy or some aspect where people think its dangerous.~~ EDIT: See link below.
- Rudybega 8mo agoI mean, Waymo gives a lot of examples of the situations, in their blog post about Fleet Response where they detail this, released May 21, 2024. They're very explicit that the Waymo Driver autonomous system is in control the entire time. This isn't something new. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response
- dekhn 8mo agoFrom what I understand, Waymo has never hidden the fact that they have remote operators, and also they have clarified that the remote operators are not actually "driving" the car (in the sense that they are not using a remote steering wheel and pedals). I find this fact to be an interesting litmus test- for example, jwz (who hates self-driving cars, AI, and bigtech) interprets the news to mean the opposite of what I said (it's a bunch of remote workers individually turning steering wheels, etc). While folks who are happier with the product or with tech and latency know that remote driving from 5000+ miles away is not technically feasible.
- LeoPanthera 8mo agoIt's pretty weird of you to use this post to attack a specific individual.
- dekhn 8mo agoIt's not an attack, it's a statement, and he recently had a popular post about this (not linking it here, as he does not take kindly to links from hacker news).
- MaxikCZ 8mo agoI dont like that story like this gets upvoted to frontpage top 10 when its just a nothing burger :'(
- semiinfinitely 8mo agowho cares
- riazrizvi 8mo agopeople who are looking for work. you will too one day when you're finally kicked out of the pool, and discover your assumptions about why you had work in the past were wrong. the problem with ignorance is that those who are ignorant aren't able to appreciate the bliss until after it's gone.
- thegreatpeter 8mo agoi can't imagine what this thread would look like if it turned out tesla was doing it!
- topherPedersen 8mo agoI don't have any problem with Waymos having a human in the loop for assistance, but sending all of our jobs to other countries is destroying the United States.
- lugu 8mo agoSorry but Google is a multinational corporation. It makes profites and products everywhere in the world. You should probably open the eyes.
- osti 8mo agoSo now you don't want capitalism?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- heraldgeezer 8mo agoOkay, lets do your job and career next! Just capitalism bro.
- hackeraccount 8mo agoThere was a debate with Mike Dukakis when one of the moderators asked if he would want the death penalty for someone who killed his wife. He gave some cold blooded answer. The real answer was probably - I shouldn't be the one who decides what happened to the person who killed my wife. In the same way - It shouldn't be up to me if I get fired or my job gets shipped overseas or done by an AI. If we're in a free market it's up to all the people who are buying what I'm making. If there's a cheaper way why wouldn't they take it?
- heraldgeezer 8mo agoDownvoted by all the thirdies destroying this site.
- jrm4 8mo agoSo everyone saying "oh but they told us this" is completely missing the point; it's like those weird logic problems where everyone on the island has a dot on their head or whatever. There's a massive difference between "widely known" and "widely known that it's widely known."
- Animats 8mo agoWaymo seems to be unnecessarily secretive about this. Why not let reporters visit the control centers? Zoox had the New York Times visit one a few years ago. It came out that there are about 1.5 support people per car. Nobody has a steering wheel. They hint to the cars by dropping "breadcrumbs" on screen.
- jayd16 8mo agoWaymo has had blog posts detailing this stuff.
- joe_the_user 8mo agoThe ratio of workers to cars matters more, imo, than whether the workers drive the cars. The fundamental sell of self-driving is that it saves labor. If it effectively doesn't, self-driving essentially going to a luxury rather than a replacement for the existing models.
- baxtr 8mo agoI think it’s funny how this can be framed: Self-driving cars facilitate the offshoring of local jobs.
- Geste 8mo agoThe goal of it all is to reduce the costs of labor (you, basically). On that, AI and robotics are doing just fine !
- TurdF3rguson 8mo agoThe labor Waymo reduces is Uber drivers. How is that me basically? I'm not an Uber driver.
- dcchambers 8mo agoFrom a legal standpoint: do these people need valid drivers licenses?
- adolph 8mo agoI think this is a key question. In the May 2024 blog post about "fleet response" it sounds like Waymo has a lawyerly set of rules they follow to distinguish between remote operation and providing guidance to the self-driving system. Much like phone-a-friend, when the Waymo vehicle encounters a particular situation on the road, the autonomous driver can reach out to a human fleet response agent for additional information to contextualize its environment. The Waymo Driver does not rely solely on the inputs it receives from the fleet response agent and it is in control of the vehicle at all times. [...] Fleet response can influence the Waymo Driver's path, whether indirectly through indicating lane closures, explicitly requesting the AV use a particular lane, or, in the most complex scenarios, explicitly proposing a path for the vehicle to consider. The Waymo Driver evaluates the input from fleet response and independently remains in control of driving. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response
- hsbauauvhabzb 8mo agoI’d be curious about situations where latency or outages result in deaths of people who have not signed the waymo TOS.
- rcxdude 8mo agoHas Waymo been responsible, in any material way, for any deaths? To my knowledge they have not. (from a quick search: their cars have been involved in one fatal collision total, where a "SUV rear-ends stopped vehicle behind stopped Waymo at high speed, one passenger in the human-driven car and animal declared dead", a situation in which their car was obviously only peripherally involved)
- hsbauauvhabzb 8mo ago
- hettygreen 8mo agoFilipino here.. I always wondered why "Taxi Cab Simulator 7" looked so realistic.
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- dboreham 8mo agoInteresting to watch mainstream media cover something while pretending it is new news. Same thing with various aspects of the Epstein matter.
- xyst 8mo agoSo "autonomous" vehicles are not actually autonomous. AV companies are so scummy.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- cal_dent 8mo agoThe resurgence of this seems to be another addition to the sort of culture war that is going on right now around ai v human labour. I suspect this sort of thing will continue to make hay in the press over the coming year
- eek2121 8mo agoFun fact, if they are using foreign workers at all, however briefly, they are likely in violation of state law in multiple states. HOWEVER: It is entirely possible that some back room deals were made, and possibly laws put on the books in the states they've rolled out in. I suspect more will come from this, eventually, especially if waymo is involved in accidents that involve insurance claims, injuries, or deaths in one of those states.
- danpalmer 8mo agoIIRC from when Waymo discussed this previously, the remote people don't drive the car, they issue instructions to the autonomous driver. If that's the case they shouldn't need a driving licence.
- rcxdude 8mo agowhat state law would they be violating?
- dekhn 8mo agoWouldn't it be risky to do that? This is a multi-billion dollar gamble being executed in front of the public, egregiously breaking the law or making back-room deals both risk extreme negative public reaction if exposed. We know that eventually a self-driving car will hit somebody and kill them. Waymo and other companies are prepared for that.
- jonplackett 8mo agoJust been reading about the crash they’re talking about in the article - it seems like a kid walked out from between two parked cars. Rather than being a bad thing, this is probably Waymo saving his life. It says the car reduced speed from 17mph to 6mph before contact. This is the kind of reaction-speed safety an AI car should have over a human driver - instead it’s just ‘waymo hit a kid’.
- TurdF3rguson 8mo agoReducing speed is great, but isn't a swerve called for in that situation?
- 0xDEFACED 8mo agonot if the swerve would put you headlong into oncoming traffic
- TurdF3rguson 8mo agoIt wouldn't be headlong, possibly sidelong though. Seems worth it to save a kid, no?
- dekhn 8mo agoneither cars nor humans are expected to solve trolley problems during real-time incidents.
- mothballed 8mo agoCars, no, but truckers have been damned for not just sacrificing themselves when their brakes failed. There was a recent incident where a truck had its brakes fail on its way into Denver from the Rockies and killed several people. They should have taken an off ramp, but IIRC, both in public opinion and in court it was argued that failing that they should have just committed suicide by going off the road before they hit a family.
- jp0d 8mo agoShouldn't these workers in Phillipines be required to be licensed to drive cars in the USA to operate those vehicles (even remotely)? I understand that they're not really driving those cars. But they've control over these cars and they do operate them when required on public roads.
- jedberg 8mo agoInternational drivers are allowed to drive on US roads as long as they have a valid license in their own country. In particular, Filipino drivers are allowed to drive on US roads without any extra paperwork. But also, even in the USA, we have 51+ different licensing schemes in the US. We already accept that if you have a license in one place, it's good in all the places.
- rcxdude 8mo agoIndeed. I can rent a car and drive in the US, despite having learnt to drive and only having a driving license from a country which drives on the other side of the road.
- Ylpertnodi 8mo agoThe correct side, and not the right side.
- Curiositiy 8mo agoYou would wonder how many US healthcare businesses use customer service reps and other workers in PH.
- jsemrau 8mo agoOld news, I wrote about this almost 2 years ago: https://jdsemrau.substack.com/p/is-teleoperated-driving-paving-the https://jdsemrau.substack.com/p/is-teleoperated-driving-pavi...
- renewiltord 8mo agoFYI to anyone clicking, it's a paid link.
- lateforwork 8mo agoUnlike Waymo, Tesla robotaxis as controlled by remote workers with steering wheels on their desks, see: https://youtu.be/X8XFsROXifY?t=924 https://youtu.be/X8XFsROXifY?t=924 This reminds of Amazon Go "Just Walk Out" technology which turned out to be pretty low tech: remote workers in India watching you through cameras.
- rcxdude 8mo agoThe Amazon Go situation was also wildly misrepresented in media, to be clear. It's fairly obvious that they did actually have some vaguely accurate video processing tech, it's just that the reliability never hit a level that the cost of fixing up errors actually saved money vs the alternative. (The same consideration also applies to Waymo: even if they are not controlling the car like a RC car, does the cost of running their interventions turn the unit economics of their business upside-down? And if not, would this still be true if they were paying US wages for it?)
- uyzstvqs 8mo agoHow does one turn "Tesla has computer-connected steering wheels at their office" into "Tesla robotaxis as controlled by remote workers with steering wheels on their desks"? This reminds me of people saying that ChatGPT was actually just quick typists from India, back in 2022.
- sanex 8mo agoDon't all companies use remote workers in the Philippines?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 8mo agoNo user-agent header required: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/waymo-exec-reveals-company-uses-remote-workers-in-the-philippines-to-assist-autonomous-vehicles/ar-AA1VL9B3/ https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/waymo-exec-reveals-com... Text-only, HTTPS optional: http://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1VL9B3/ http://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1VL9B3/ https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1VL9B3/ https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1VL9B3... Simple HTML: { x=AA1VL9B3 ipv4=23.11.201.94 echo "<meta charset=utf-8>"; (printf 'GET /content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/'$x'/ HTTP/1.0\r\n' printf 'Host: assets.msn.com\r\n\r\n') \ |nc -vvn $ipv4 80 |grep -o "<p>.*</p>"|tr -d '\134' } > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm
- hackeraccount 8mo agoHonestly AI with remote human assist or remote human with AI assist totally seems like the way to go to me. I mean they should be doing the same thing for truck drivers, train operators and airlines.