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I'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 o

• alephnerd 8mo ago
  Partially, 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 ago
  There 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 ago
  It'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 ago
    The remote operators are not called upon to answer matters of law.
    • Retric 8mo ago
      Moving 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.
      • deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
      • verdverm 8mo ago
        They aren't moving the car, they are answering customer calls and clicking waypoints on a map to unstuck the car when it phones home "I'm confused" It's click bait for people's priors
        • catmanjan 8mo ago
          If someone from the Phillipines clicks waypoints for a drone in Ukraine, is it a warcrime?
        • circuit10 8mo ago
          I would assume that unsticking it requires forcing it to do maneuvers that it would otherwise refuse to do (or it would just unstick itself), so you'd need some knowledge of laws to do that
        • Retric 8mo ago
          Those waypoints have legal implications. It’s often illegal to make a U-Turn to avoid a police checkpoint for example. There’s no way someone can unstick a confused car without being able to make legally relevant choices.
          • dekhn 8mo ago
            In California (and I think most places) it's not illegal to make a (legal) U-turn to avoid a police checkpoint or otherwise avoid a checkpoint.
            • 8mo ago
    • turtlesdown11 8mo ago
      > answer matters of law well yes, answering matters of law is the exclusive jurisdiction of judges
  • dekhn 8mo ago
    The scope of their actions does not require them to have passed a driver's test.
    • blibble 8mo ago
      so they can't induce movement of the vehicle, at all, ever? that's probably fine then but if they can at all: they need a driving license it is not unreasonable for a state to want to control who is allowed to move around 1.5 tonnes of metal in a public environment
      • offnominal 8mo ago
        This is analogous to a situation where a passenger in a vehicle, for example, asks the driver to pull over or to drive to a given spot. I believe the passenger does not need to have a driving license to perform this task.
      • dekhn 8mo ago
        I have no specific knowledge of the law or the tech requirements here, but I don't think that the state of CA makes Google get CA driving licenses for its phillipines service employees.
        • atq2119 8mo ago
          There may be an is/ought confusion in your exchange. It is probably true that California has no such law today. It's also true that regulation always takes a while to catch up to technological advances, and so there is a useful, separate conversation to be had about whether California (and anywhere else) ought to have such a law.
          • dekhn 8mo ago
            To be clear, California's legislators are paying close attention to Waymo, both because it's being deployed in their major cities, and because Alphabet is a California company. Depending on which legislator you listen to, Waymo is either the devil that is constantly running people and cats down everywhere, or savior that will rapidly replace all human drivers because it's safer. At least for now, they are keeping a fairly light touch on the legislation for self-driving cars, both because they want to see the technology expand without unnecessary regulation, and because they want to know what the baseline fatality rate is compared to humans. Likely when the image is clearer (personally I expect that self-driving will expand to all major US cities, and also demonstrate that it is safer than humans) they will find some regulation around remote operator qualifications.
• RupertSalt 8mo ago
  Yes, I think this is counting on the ignorance that people will believe there are "drone operators" at the console, halfway across the world, who are driving our cars [A.I. stands for "Actually Indians"?] The way I understood the liability conversation, several years ago, was that each "autonomous vehicle" would have a corresponding operator of record, a licensed driver, who would be the responsible person for the vehicle's behavior. That there would be a designated person to carry insurance and licensing and be personally responsible and personally answer to criminal or civil charges if "their" vehicle got in a fix. Honestly this model doesn't make any sense, as Waymo has set it up so that the only driver is the Waymo Driver making decisions, because the Waymo Driver is the only one who's privy to 100% the real-time data. The remote CSRs, whether they're in Philippines or stateside engineers on an escalation, are explicitly not driving the car but giving it suggestions. If they need someone to "drive the car" they literally dispatch a human who gets behind the wheel, and that's how it works.
  • School-Cotton 8mo ago
    Maybe A.I. needs to be updated to stand for “Actually Islanders”, now. (I’m kidding, of course — you’re right that the Actually Indians meme is a gross distortion of reality.)
  • turtlesdown11 8mo ago
    >Yes, I think this is counting on the ignorance that people will believe there are "drone operators" at the console, halfway across the world, who are driving our cars [A.I. stands for "Actually Indians"?] ... >Honestly this model doesn't make any sense, as Waymo has set it up so that the only driver is the Waymo Driver making decisions, because the Waymo Driver is the only one who's privy to 100% the real-time data. Their competitor Telsa does use teleoperation in their "robotaxis"? So what is ignorant about believing it to be the case in this scenario? https://electrek.co/2024/11/25/tesla-remote-control-team-robotaxis-waymo/ https://electrek.co/2024/11/25/tesla-remote-control-team-rob...
    • RupertSalt 8mo ago
      The article you link literally says that Tesla's teleoperation is the same kind as Waymo's, and there is nothing that the company has ever deployed that will enable "remote drone operators" so I don't know what your point is. Tesla and Waymo both offer systems to provide sensor insight to remote observers, and the remote observers can send suggestions and nudges to the vehicles. The general public does not understand the nuance here, and they imagine someone is sitting with a steering wheel and pedals, like a radio-controlled toy or a USAF Reaper drone.
• disillusioned 8mo ago
  Well, it's being framed both ways. Lazy folks are framing this as "see, it's still humans!", like this awful article by TechSpot headlined "Waymo admits that its autopilot is often just guys from the Philippines": https://www.techspot.com/news/111233-waymo-admits-autopilot-often-guys-philippines.html https://www.techspot.com/news/111233-waymo-admits-autopilot-... 1) "Often" is a gross mischaracterization. It's so infrequent you wouldn't believe. Nearly all rides are performed fully autonomously without human intervention. But "often" sure sounds spicy! 2) "its autopilot is just guys from the Philippines": no, it's not. A human is in the loop to help hint to the Waymo Driver AI platform what action to take if its confidence level is too low or it's facing a particularly odd edge case where it needs to be nudged to take an alternate route. This framing makes it sound like some dude in Manilla is remote controlling the car. They're not. They're issuing hints to and confirming choices by the Waymo Driver which remains in full control of the vehicle at all times. Because lay people, even non-technically-sophisticated lay people naturally start wondering "well, isn't there some delay between a person in the Philippines and the car in the US? how could that be safe? what if the internet dips out or the connection drops?" Which are good and valid points! And why this framing is so obnoxious and lazy. The car is always driving itself. They finally issued a correction in the linked article that makes it clear they're not remote controlling the cars, but the headline is still really slanted and a frustrating framing. When you ride in these things, you can see just how incredible this technology is and how far we've come.
  • bsimpson 8mo ago
    There's also the implicit xenophobia/offshoring angle that people in a call center in the Philippines must be doing low quality work and/or being exploited.
    • OGEnthusiast 8mo ago
      Why is it xenophobia if it could be true?
      • GuinansEyebrows 8mo ago
        as someone with zero love for waymo/alphabet, why would you believe it to be true?
• thegreatpeter 8mo ago
  all self driving companies? are you sure about that?
• kccqzy 8mo ago
  Yes it’s just because of the Philippines. The mention of the Philippines is triggering some additional scrutiny. When Waymo themselves announced this back in 2024[1] they made no mention of the country where these humans are located. Now people are raising questions about data sovereignty and local training such as U.S. driving license. Or if you are cynic you can say it’s xenophobia. [1]: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response
• dwroberts 8mo ago
  Think it is a much bigger deal than you’re making out, because we don’t have figures on how often the cars need assistance. We assume it’s just occasionally but we don’t actually know that. They could be requesting assistance constantly and Waymo would have an incentive to keep that hush-hush. Certainly would not be the first time a big SV company has faked it until they technically worked.
  • scarmig 8mo ago
    We do know it's not all cars constantly, though. The PGE outage in San Francisco proved it, as anytime a Waymo came across a unpowered traffic light, it was configured to ask for assistance. This led to disaster, as there weren't close to enough humans to provide guidance to all the Waymos.
    • dwroberts 8mo ago
      This is not proof of anything, it’s just an explanation that Waymo provided. We have no way of validating any part of that is true. The way the cars behaved during the power outage could have been the result of anything - even eg. requiring full remote control and losing connectivity to a local facility
• ljm 8mo ago
  At worst, it's the outsourcing of cab drivers to remote roles in cheaper countries. No problem for the investors who are banking on another market disruption, since they're leaving the local society to hold the bag.