I think everyone knew this and is comforted by it. I’d be concerned if there weren’t humans ready to guide or take over. The company we should all be concerned about is Tesla, and their irresponsible way of falsely advertising full self driving capabilities. Who knows what those robotaxis are capable of.
Waymo's remote drivers have literally caused accidents and we only know about it because journalists did digging. Waymo simply removed all details of the remote ops roles in it in the NHTSA reporting.
> “They provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles,” Peña told the Senate committee. “The Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving tasks, so that is just one additional input.”
This indicates a very misleading title. It sounds like they aren’t remote “operators” any more than I “operate” the tv station by deciding what channel to watch.
For now that's true, because it's early days and very much a hybrid system. In a few years having human brains in the loop will be like adding more and more orangutans around the Operating Room table.
This headline implies this assistance is a new revelation when the only part that might be new is that it's now also being outsourced to the Philippines.
I was once in a waymo stopped at a red light. Prior to the light turning green I felt a split second where the car's brake had been released, anticipating the change and then accelerating immediately when the light changed.
Since this experience I've just assumed all waymos have some warehoused human drone pilot actually controlling it.
> I was once in a waymo stopped at a red light. Prior to the light turning green I felt a split second where the car's brake had been released, anticipating the change and then accelerating immediately when the light changed.
This seems like it would be fairly straightforward to program, if not for all lights, at least for a lot (e.g. say half) of lights.
There are many other possibilities such as the system having learned the timings or another vehicle in the fleet observing the lights turn red at the other part of the junction.
The least likely possibility is a person controlling the vehicle directly over a variable latency connection that may fail completely at any time.
Behind all the new smart city tech I encountered here in Shenzhen and Shanghai are actually human operators (drones, cars, vending machines). You can find the job ads online.
People are somewhat surprised about this work being farmed out to the Philippines as opposed to being done by Americans. I'm pretty sure you don't need me to explain this, though.
They effectively are answering questions like "is this road closed", or "is the object in front of me a solid object or a weird shadow".
These are not the sort of questions that US driver's license is really related to, it's not things like "can I legally turn right on red at this intersection".
Do we require a driver's license to solve Google reCapture questions like "what squares have a bike in them"? Because the waymo stuff is closer to image classification than driving.
If they have a driver’s license from the Philippines, then it should be enough. Just like foreign tourists can rent and drive cars in the US without needing a US state driver’s license.
You've imagined a scenario around remote drivers having access to the internal microphones.
Waymo tells you explicitly that all the microphones inside the car are off unless you press the button to call rider support yourself.
If you'd ever ridden in waymo, perhaps you'd recall them telling you that the first time you rode one.
> if you can't think of more perhaps you should keep your comments out of the discussion, because at present you've contributed nothing but ignorance.
You really shouldn't end your comment with that if you're not going to read up on whether a hypothetical scenario you've imagined up is ignorant or not.
Waymo's article from 2024 about these operations (“much like phone-a-friend”): https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/
The blog post includes short videos that illustrate what the fleet response does:
• (29 seconds long) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0WtBFEfAyo
• (59 seconds long) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elpQPbJXpfY
This was from congressional testimony this past week by executives from Waymo and Tesla, video and automated transcript here: https://www.c-span.org/program/senate-committee/tesla-and-wa...
I think everyone knew this and is comforted by it. I’d be concerned if there weren’t humans ready to guide or take over. The company we should all be concerned about is Tesla, and their irresponsible way of falsely advertising full self driving capabilities. Who knows what those robotaxis are capable of.
Waymo's remote drivers have literally caused accidents and we only know about it because journalists did digging. Waymo simply removed all details of the remote ops roles in it in the NHTSA reporting.
What journalists should I look for to see that
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uhh. What? If you think "everyone knew this" then you thought a falsehood.
> “They provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles,” Peña told the Senate committee. “The Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving tasks, so that is just one additional input.”
This indicates a very misleading title. It sounds like they aren’t remote “operators” any more than I “operate” the tv station by deciding what channel to watch.
It's more like you operate the code by vibe-coding alone. You don't write it, but you do tell it "what", and if you desire "where" and even "how".
Having physical brains in the loop seems like a good thing.
For now that's true, because it's early days and very much a hybrid system. In a few years having human brains in the loop will be like adding more and more orangutans around the Operating Room table.
I think some are wondering if these overseas employees are driving cars in the US without a US driver's license.
They aren't driving the cars. If someone is giving you advice from the backseat, do they need a driver's license?
With roughly 400 ms round-trip latency does that even make sense? A car travelling 50 km/h manages to advance by 5 m in that time.
This headline implies this assistance is a new revelation when the only part that might be new is that it's now also being outsourced to the Philippines.
I was once in a waymo stopped at a red light. Prior to the light turning green I felt a split second where the car's brake had been released, anticipating the change and then accelerating immediately when the light changed.
Since this experience I've just assumed all waymos have some warehoused human drone pilot actually controlling it.
Waymo remote operators cannot drive the car
how do you know ?
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> I was once in a waymo stopped at a red light. Prior to the light turning green I felt a split second where the car's brake had been released, anticipating the change and then accelerating immediately when the light changed.
This seems like it would be fairly straightforward to program, if not for all lights, at least for a lot (e.g. say half) of lights.
There are many other possibilities such as the system having learned the timings or another vehicle in the fleet observing the lights turn red at the other part of the junction.
The least likely possibility is a person controlling the vehicle directly over a variable latency connection that may fail completely at any time.
Behind all the new smart city tech I encountered here in Shenzhen and Shanghai are actually human operators (drones, cars, vending machines). You can find the job ads online.
1 reply →
Why would you assume this from that experience?
Its turtles all the way down.
Ok, and?
Then they’re not really self driving are they?
The assistants don't have access to the gas pedal or steering wheel input. The car is the only thing actually piloting the car i.e. self driving
* Unless it gets super stuck, then a human drives out and gets into the physical driver seat and takes over
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My assumption is they can provide input such as "you should make a left/right lane change" to get out of a "stuck" location.
So when the car's systems prevent it from taking a specific action, they can override it for a single instance.
People are somewhat surprised about this work being farmed out to the Philippines as opposed to being done by Americans. I'm pretty sure you don't need me to explain this, though.
Do they have driver's licenses from a US state?
Waymo has a blog post on what these remote assistance people do: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/
They effectively are answering questions like "is this road closed", or "is the object in front of me a solid object or a weird shadow".
These are not the sort of questions that US driver's license is really related to, it's not things like "can I legally turn right on red at this intersection".
Do we require a driver's license to solve Google reCapture questions like "what squares have a bike in them"? Because the waymo stuff is closer to image classification than driving.
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If they have a driver’s license from the Philippines, then it should be enough. Just like foreign tourists can rent and drive cars in the US without needing a US state driver’s license.
Do you think American tourists have to take a Filipino driver’s license when they rent a car on vacation?
Is Waymo software licensed by a dmv ?
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[flagged]
You've imagined a scenario around remote drivers having access to the internal microphones.
Waymo tells you explicitly that all the microphones inside the car are off unless you press the button to call rider support yourself.
If you'd ever ridden in waymo, perhaps you'd recall them telling you that the first time you rode one.
> if you can't think of more perhaps you should keep your comments out of the discussion, because at present you've contributed nothing but ignorance.
You really shouldn't end your comment with that if you're not going to read up on whether a hypothetical scenario you've imagined up is ignorant or not.
1 reply →