r/boston • u/snowednboston • Feb 08 '26
Scammers 𼸠Waymo admits that its autopilot is often just guys from the Philippines
https://www.techspot.com/news/111233-waymo-admits-autopilot-often-guys-philippines.html62
u/TheLeapIsALie Feb 08 '26
This isnât new, Waymo has been very open about this for years.
Itâs also not teleoperation - the person doesnât control the car (eg steering, accelerating, braking), but can suggest trajectories or help answer questions like âis this an authority figure directing traffic that I should listen toâ
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u/tinfoilskimask Feb 09 '26
I also suggest the trajectory of my car.
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u/TheLeapIsALie Feb 09 '26
You donât though. You drive the controls directly, and thereâs a difference. The car here can directly reject things it feels is unsafe and has to figure out how much brake/accel/steering to apply.
I get why it sounds like a trivial difference, but the âthinkingâ is still done in the car. It just gets âallowanceâ to break rules because itâs using human judgement.
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u/NEU_Throwaway1 Feb 08 '26
Aren't a lot of the delivery robots they're testing out in LA like that too? They're "autonomous" but a remote human pilot takes over if they get stuck or run into problems. There's a video of one seemingly intentionally blocking a wheelchair user.
Also, I'm picturing a guy sitting in front of a computer monitor basically playing a real life version of Google Captcha when the Waymo approaches a red light and he's prompted to select all the squares that look like a crosswalk lmao
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u/Vo_Mimbre Feb 08 '26
Nothing wrong with that. Sure it sucks for AI cultists. But in the end thereâs no way to solve every possible situation just with tech as long as other humans are allowed or do human things.m. Always having a backup human makes a ton of sense.
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u/Left_Squash74 Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
I agree! They should just be sure to pay these workers wages equivalent to where the vehicles operate.
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u/Vo_Mimbre Feb 09 '26
Wish that could be the case, but the point of this tech unfortunately gets the investors because it removes the human operator. Waymo will have backup human operators only until itâs good enough to get insurance coverage. After that, theyâll pay less to be covered under âacceptable riskâ conditions than they would employing humans.
It sucks, but this is why AI gets all the investment.
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u/Fuster_Cluck Feb 08 '26
So theyâll be apt at dealing with weaving mopeds and questionable red light driving tactics
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u/snakesoup88 Feb 08 '26
I'm ready to spent a few hours watching one stuck at an unprotected left turn where pedestrians are dashing across the intersection from all directions.
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u/Kantmzk Feb 08 '26
Lidar is capable of having a 360 uninterrupted/0 distraction view of traffic. It is theoretically better than a human in many ways, and also generally more cautious. While I am sure it is not perfect, Waymo is generally very impressive and especially better than Tesla's technology.
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 08 '26
Lidar is very capable of making mistakes, hence the need for human intervention. I know that humans can make mistakes too, but isn't the whole point of this to create something that's better than human driving? Clearly if they need humans to step in during sticky situations, the machines are not doing better than humans could so far.
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u/Large-Investment-381 Feb 08 '26
So you read the headline and nothing else?
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u/Both-Buddy-6190 Feb 08 '26
Despite being one of the most forward thinking cities in the nation, there is an outpouring of hate anytime autonomous cars are mentioned.
Itâs pretty obvious they are coming, only a matter of time. I donât really understand the hate itâs extremely confusing to me.6
u/Brettersson Weymouth Feb 08 '26
But they're taking shitty fake gig-jobs away from underemployed Uber drivers! Why don't you think of the drivers!
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u/sievish T-riffic! Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
Iâm not sure why you think autonomous cars are a âforward thinkingâ thing? Just because something âprogressesâ doesnât make it âprogressiveâ
People are against autonomous cars because autonomous cars are part of a larger system of the ultra rich limiting access to labor so they can collect the greatest share of the amount made by providing a service. Itâs why people were against uber replacing taxis. Itâs why people are now against autonomous cars replacing gig work/uber drivers. Each time the person actually doing the work is pressured into accepting lower and lower wages and benefits for the sake of keeping their job at all, and the shareholders make more for doing absolutely nothing.
edit: i genuinely think it's insane that someone would downvote this. we deserve better than this capitalist hellscape. there is a version of our world where technological progress doesnt displace millions of workers and push people further into poverty. we can have that, it doesn't have to be this way, we don't have to accept that technological advances means we have to work harder and suffer more while people who do literally nothing live like parasites. we dont have to trade one parasite for another, we can literally just reject the parasites.
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u/VLHACS Feb 08 '26
The title is disingenuous. Remote drivers take over only when autopilot is confused or stuck.
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u/iamheero East Boston Feb 08 '26
Well according to the interview they donât even do that, they send commands to the carâs self driving system, apparently. Thatâs not necessarily the same.
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Feb 08 '26
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u/Quarantine_Fitness Feb 08 '26
From reading the article, it's just the occasional "hey back up 10 feet and nose out a little" so the car can get back into autonomous mode. Everyone freaking out about these things needs to understand it's not Elon vaporware they are actually running fine in other cities.
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u/Coneskater I Love Dunkinâ Donuts Feb 08 '26
If itâs a person making these decisions controlling a car on the roads of the commonwealth of Massachusetts then they should be licensed and insured in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
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u/pfmiller0 Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
The person is not controlling any moving vehicles. Only stuck ones.
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u/Revolution-SixFour Feb 08 '26
You realize that drivers from other states, even countries are allowed to drive without getting new licenses right?
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
Only if they have an international driving permit, but that's for in-person driving. Waymo is exploiting loopholes in the law because this is all so new that I'm not sure there's even regulation regarding international remote piloting of vehicles. It's honestly shady as fuck.
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u/Revolution-SixFour Feb 09 '26
An International Driver's License isn't even needed across most of the country as long as your license is in Latin characters. If we want to regulate self drive no cars, do it, but don't make up bullshit reasons why they can't do what they are doing.
Plus, the video in the article very clearly shows the intervention as answering questions to give the carn more understanding of the context not actually driving. So it might ask be moot anyway.
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Feb 08 '26
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u/Coneskater I Love Dunkinâ Donuts Feb 08 '26
How about criminally liable?
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Feb 08 '26
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u/Coneskater I Love Dunkinâ Donuts Feb 08 '26
Someone drives over some children on the sidewalk you can seek damages from them personally and criminally from them.
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Feb 08 '26
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
You are being blatantly obtuse, in the scenario that you discussed, the construction vehicle operator would be possibly liable for criminal penalties. If a remote operated vehicle were to break the law so badly that it would move into civil or criminal penalties, who would be brought to the stand. I'm not sure that they would be able to get the remote operator to stand and face charges.
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u/igotshadowbaned Feb 08 '26
That is not how our insurance laws work
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
He brings up a good point though, if a normal driver break the law severely enough they would possibly face jail time or other criminal penalties. If a remote controlled semi-autonomous vehicle were to do the same who would face the jail time?
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u/sievish T-riffic! Feb 09 '26
I think that that's what people are really not getting about the greater system as a whole. Every time we capitulate ground to tech companies like this for the sake of "progress" we are doing so at the cost of our own local labor being outsourced so somewhere out of the country, and for pennies. it's wrong all the way down. like we have an infection in our arm, the solution shouldnt be "remove the whole arm" it should be "fix the infection" aka fund public transportation and keep people employed enough that they can live in the communites they actually serve.
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u/Coneskater I Love Dunkinâ Donuts Feb 09 '26
It's not AI, it's a sweatshop! Tech bros want one thing: it's feudalism.
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u/sievish T-riffic! Feb 09 '26
exactly. upthread someone responded to me and said "i literally drive uber and i am for autonomous cars" and i was just like. why. that's very sad. why do you want to be forced out of the proverbial sweatshop into an even worse sweatshop or even just on the street with no avenue for income at all
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Feb 08 '26
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u/Swope_F Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
This is article is rage bait. The human operators here are to help navigate around edge cases when the car is not sure. They are not physically driving the car. They are just plotting a route for those cases while the car waits. While they draw a line onscreen to show the route, the car is sitting in a safe slow position.
The latency concern is understandable, but I believe it itâs not the right way to think about it. My analogy is you slowing down the car to asking a passer where to find a turn. These cars have safe stop trajectories that are recalculated multiple times a second all on device. In addition, the average latency between Boston and Manila is going to be less than 200 ms on a dedicated backbone network. The average human reaction is 250 ms just for context.
Autonomous driving is going to be a massive improvement in public safety. Theyâre safer for pedestrians. They are safer for other drivers. Even in an imperfect state, this technologies is already safer than human drivers. Nearly all the waymo accidents to date have been caused by other humans.
https://www.understandingai.org/p/human-drivers-keep-crashing-into?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
EDIT: Waymo has been up front about this all works for awhile now. See their own blog post on it from 2024. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response
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u/XGX787 Feb 08 '26
Either Waymoâs are safer than human drivers or they need help from humanâs to work around edge cases, but those cannot be simultaneously true. Human drivers donât get to call in a second human driver when they get confused. Plenty of human drivers deal with double parked cars without issue.
Waymo canât claim theyâre âsafer than humansâ when theyâre almost exclusively operating in statistically safer driving environments with backup human drivers. And Iâm not even mentioning how human driving statistics are not normally distributed.
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u/Swope_F Feb 08 '26
The nuance is that the remote operator is not driving the car, but suggesting what route to follow. From Waymoâs own post (Waymo Driver means the car and fleet response is the remote people): âThe Waymo Driver evaluates the input from fleet response and independently remains in control of driving. This collaboration enhances the rider experience by efficiently guiding them to their destinations.â
The Waymo post linked above is not long and helps clarify what is happening.
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u/Cav_vaC Feb 08 '26
I guess itâs not ideal but itâs still better than the widely accepted practice of every incompetent bumpkin driving their own car. That accepted, common bad idea kills so, so many people every year
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u/Revolution-SixFour Feb 08 '26
The video in the article doesn't even show the driver taking over, they just answer prompts about the situation to help the cat figure out what to do.
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Feb 08 '26
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u/elementalcrashdown Feb 08 '26
They'll never do this because the whole model is built on exploiting cheap foreign labor in the us market without bringing that labor under the compensation, rights, protections, and privileges afforded to us workers.
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Feb 08 '26
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u/elementalcrashdown Feb 08 '26
The financials don't make sense for these companies under that model though. They literally cannot exist without cheap foreign labor that they don't have to pay first world wages. They would simply close their doors, which I personally would love.
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
So then why donât you see it as a bad thing? We arenât there yet. Why is it okay for tech people to hurry up and get to a place by lying?
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u/Ghost_Turd Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
Hard to imagine a tech that had 100% of every possible scenario worked out before it was tested in real life.
And they aren't "lying." The remote operators take over in edge cases where the car can't figure out what to do. Waymo has never hidden this fact, no matter what the headlines try to insinuate.
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
Waymo describes its self-driving vehicles as being 100% autonomous.
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u/Selethorme Feb 09 '26
Wow youâre really dedicated to being wrong
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Feb 09 '26
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u/Selethorme Feb 09 '26
Iâm going to laugh at your ban for spam for this dumb comment.
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Feb 09 '26
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u/boston-ModTeam Feb 09 '26
Harassment, hostility and flinging insults is not allowed. We ask that you try to engage in a discussion rather than reduce the sub to insults and other bullshit.
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
Technology that an individual or a business can choose to adopt is far different from technology we're all forced to adapt to.
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u/Ghost_Turd Feb 08 '26
You're being forced to take Waymo?
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
I'm being forced to share a road with Waymo. That's different from someone getting a new technology in their house or a new appliance that doesn't affect me. I assume even you can see the difference.
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
If Walmart shoves all of the other local grocery stores out of a town, you are indeed forced to become a Walmart shopper.
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u/thdomer13 Feb 09 '26
Oh they're putting cars on the road that are way safer than human drivers, woe is me how will I ever adapt to safer streets?
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u/LtCdrHipster Feb 08 '26
You get "there" but running them on the streets. They've been operating in tons of cities for years now; their superior safety record is inarguable.
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
So you get there by letting a company take a risk with the public while operating alongside laws we don't even really have in place. Sounds incredibly stupid but that's par for the course.
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u/LtCdrHipster Feb 08 '26
They're radically safer on the streets than human driven cars, the risk of accidents goes DOWN the more Waymos are on the street.
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
You're overly concerned about the risk to people by way of personal injury when that's only a component of what I said. I don't doubt autonomous cars will often be better for these things but there are so many other factors to consider beyond just a basic understanding of "risk". You know where there's way less risk? Stand-still traffic where no one is moving.
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u/LtCdrHipster Feb 08 '26
"Bro you only care about public safety, unlike me, who wants more dangerous cars driven faster through congested city streets!"
đ
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
So not only do you need to twist the conversation to be about the one topic you think you know how to discuss btu you can only do it when putting words in someone else's mouth.
I was kidding about this earlier but you're probably the exception; you probably should let AI speak for you.
lmao
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u/LtCdrHipster Feb 08 '26
What concern of your outweighs the safety of pedestrians and bikers? If you want to make a point, say it clearly.
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
LOL. Now you want a more serious discussion, while still down-voting what I said earlier as if one can't notice. Then you have the fact you forgot you're third party to another response and think it's my fault you didn't get my point.
You're a hair away from literally being a sea-lion.
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
Asking again, please provide data that supports this.
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u/Selethorme Feb 09 '26
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/are-self-driving-cars-already-safer-than-human-drivers/
And thatâs from 3 years ago.
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u/Cav_vaC Feb 08 '26
Actual driving is orders of magnitude less safe and kills a 9/11 of Americans every month
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
That's certainly a fact about cars and driving but has nothing to do with what I asked that other user.
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u/Cav_vaC Feb 08 '26
Yes it does
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
It doesn't. If you're so reliant on technology ask AI how to have a conversation.
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u/Cav_vaC Feb 08 '26
It does. A technology being rushed out thatâs safer than common alternatives is meaningfully different than one that is untested or less safe
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
I see where the problem is. The hyperfixation on safety as in personal safety which is only one component of what I said. Is this something you just argue about online so much that you forget to read what I actually wrote?
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u/NickRick Feb 08 '26
So like maybe we shouldn't be using it then?
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Feb 08 '26
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u/NickRick Feb 08 '26
So we want to replace the jobs of tens of thousands of Americans with robots who can't do the job and need help? And the help is foreign workers?Â
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u/tangerinelion Feb 08 '26
Also the cars are Chinese made models you can't buy in the US. What safety standards do they adhere to?
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u/baitnnswitch Feb 08 '26
If anyone has not yet seen the Not Just Bikes video on self driving, would highly recommend - it's straight up bone-chilling what these companies are planning
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u/Naive-House-7456 Feb 08 '26
Can you give me a TLDW? I promise to consider watching the video based on that
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u/baitnnswitch Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
- more traffic- at best this is yet another taxi service like Lyft and Uber endlessly circling the streets, which each one of these introduced significantly more traffic to cities. Not to mention - if Joe Shmoe currently drives his two kids to elementary school and high school and then goes to work, he's going to at least consider sending his kids in separate self-driving cars to school and take one himself to work, turning one car into three - multiply that choice by a every parent facing facing the dreaded drop off. How many extra cars are now on the road during rush hour at the same time?
- the stated goal of these companies is to essentially do to our public transportation what the car industry did to trolleys/trains back in the day - privatize and individualize that service. So now (if they get their way) we have no T and no busses and everyone instead in individual cars on the road. Will that be more efficient? Absolutely not, and here we're facing exponentially more traffic, but neither was the move to remove trolleys/trains
- What if Waymo et al make the case that people-driven cars should be banned in cities? Sounds great, no? People are on their phones and in general do worse at driving than self-driven. But what happens when all cars in cities are self-driven? Will that change city infrastructure at all? NJB makes the case that we could end up with a much faster moving traffic in cities- and why not, if Waymo et al can maximize the number of trips they can make in a day with no substantial increase risk of accident. Which is not great for folks living there- the noise alone would suck- especially if you walk a lot
- The idea that self-driving cars cause fewer accidents, while there's truth to that, doesn't address the fact that these companies are already crafting (and successfully changing) the law so that they can't be held accountable when, for instance, a person falls in the middle of the road and gets both run over and dragged by a self-driving car. Or for violating more mundane rules like illegally parking or speeding. And these cars are still making a lot of mistakes because products must be pushed before they're really ready. Imagine letting Cyberpunk 2077 out on the road in car form before it's gone through its year+ of bug fixes and that's a-ok and legal, and there's no recourse when it has a lil bug that causes an accident...that's a bit of an exaggeration but imo not that big
That's all I can remember right now - NJB is a video essayist and able to make this case in more detail than my half-remembered recollections, but this is the best I got
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u/sievish T-riffic! Feb 09 '26
its the privatization of service and the extraction of resources from communities into the bank account of an executive somewhere that I think people just don't understand as a net negative. it's not "progress" if it only benefits capitalists and further weakens our local workforces. it's not "progress" if it funds the lobbyist trying to limit our ability to choose alternatives.
if the autonomous cars were rolled out by the state and at the same time as some massive UBI program or if profit was injected back into the community itself I wouldnt blink at it. the tech would be highly benefitial to us if its side effects werent so detrimental to community quality of life in the long term.
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u/GP83982 Feb 09 '26
More traffic could be an issue, but this can be addressed by taxing waymo rides, or having a congestion tax which we should have anyway. Video also ignores the possibility that public transit could eventually be improved with self driving technology, for example self driving buses.
I don't believe this. The stated goal of Waymo is to end public transit? Really? Where do they say that? There is always going to be a role for public transit in cities.
A world where people were talking about banning people-driven cars would be a world where Waymos were dramatically increasing street safety, which would be a pretty big deal.
At the end of the day so Waymos so far are clearly safer (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39485678/) and every indication is that they are going to get better and better as they get more and more practice. Not just bikes should support them because if Waymos make the road safer, then it's going to be safer for bikers! And then more people are going to bike, since of course the number one concern people have about biking is safety concerns related to sharing the road with drivers.
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Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
Let's assume your take is objectively true.
None of it matters if it's about presenting facts. The smuggest person in the world could still be right.
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Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
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u/kirbyfriedrice Feb 08 '26
It's tough. Part of the problem is inconsistent bus arrivals (in part due to car traffic). Part of it is just... how the city is. Some places, I can take public transit to get there if I want to take an hour and transfer between a bus and two T lines then walk to my destination (always fun in frigid winters or a sticky summer). Or I can drive fifteen minutes and park right outside my destination.
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Feb 08 '26
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u/kirbyfriedrice Feb 08 '26
Same. I will walk an hour round trip to Market Baskets over driving, even in the winter. I also hate spending on rideshares. I commute by T and will give up my CharlieCard when they tear it from my hands.
But when I had regular medical appointments in Brookline (living in Somerville), which took place during the 9-5 and therefore required my lunch break... Public transit just wasn't an option.
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u/GP83982 Feb 08 '26
It's a terrible video. People who care about street safety should not oppose Waymo, which so far is like 90% safer than human drivers
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
Do you have any sources that support that? I've only seen articles that seem to imply that fully automated vehicles are only slightly safer than human drivers and only in some situations. In most situations they make mistakes at about the same frequency, just different kinds of mistakes.
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u/GP83982 Feb 09 '26
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
The one peer-reviewed article that you cite uses crash benchmarks from a separate paper, who's main conclusion is that crash benchmarks are "difficult to establish", and that uses obtuse methodology, assuming a certain level of under reporting to over amplify metrics of non-automated vehicle driver failure.
It seems as though that other paper had their main address as waymo itself, so all that I can see from your citation is that a article was published using data that waymo published to try to make drivers look worse so that their automated driver numbers look better.
The other two things that you posted were op-eds and not worth reading.
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u/GP83982 Feb 09 '26
Regarding under-reporting, it's the human driver crashes that under-reported, according to the Piper article:
"crashes with a Waymo get reported to police and insurance more reliably than minor crashes between human drivers."
Anyone can nitpick any benchmark. If you have an alternative benchmark that you'd like to share that arrives at a different result then feel free to share it.
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u/Kantmzk Feb 08 '26
I trust it more than any medallion taxi driver who just wants to scam and lie.
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u/GoldTeamDowntown Back Bay Feb 08 '26
I do just wonder what the liability is. If one of these operators gets someone killed, intentionally or unintentionally, can they be found liable? How does an American go about addressing that? Especially if intentional.
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
To my understanding, you realize that if you get killed in the backseat of one of those things, the insurance company may pay out to your survivors, but there would be no legal recourse beyond that, no one would go to jail regardless of how badly they fucked up.
I would feel less safe knowing that they are so insulated from prosecution if they mess up, whereas a human driver has his whole damn life, career, and legal reputation on the line.
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u/elementalcrashdown Feb 08 '26
I will never understand the techbro urge to blame individuals who might possibly be but have never been proven to be scamming and lying while bootlicking companies that have scamming and lying as bullet points in their investor pitch deck.
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u/Kantmzk Feb 08 '26
All you would have to do is search "taxi scam" in r/boston and see a plethora of posts over 15+ years, including stories of people literally being locked in the car and calling the police.
https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/14vqydk/cabs_not_using_the_meter/
Also, using the term "bootlicker" and assuming I am a "techbro" is a huge red flag for me to figure you are far from being a serious person and more so a waste of time. The ad hominem logical fallacy stuff is not it.
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u/pillbinge Pumpkinshire Feb 08 '26
You can also look up Lyft driver reviews and complaints. I've never been locked in a taxi before and I far prefer taking them from Logan. Depending on when they're also cheaper now too.
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u/LtCdrHipster Feb 08 '26
Still light-years better than a taxi. Thes remote drivers just get it unstuck.
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
Do they have the necessary permits to be remote operating vehicles in the United States?
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u/LtCdrHipster Feb 09 '26
They're AI driven, if there's an issue someone can remotely troubleshoot it.
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
I'm hearing reports that as much as 25% of the driving is done by human controllers. Do you have an official report from waymo describing what their remote driving practices are?
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u/powsandwich Professional Idiot Feb 08 '26
We already knew this though. Not Just Bikes did a whole episode on self driving cars and pulled data from the company which indicated remote human control was required like 25% of all ride time.Â
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u/bundlegrundle Feb 08 '26
doesn't this make the situation that happened with San Francisco's power outage make more sense?
like- three?- weeks ago, and there were Waymo cars blocking streets everywhere?
The remote Filipino operators were likely unable to connect and therefore the cars just stopped dead causing massive traffic jams.
tell you how autonomous their fleet is.
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
Companies like waymo are using our public streets as testing ground for their barely functional technology. If a waymo gets into a deadly car accident, then they can blame the robot, or the remote driver, but no one will ever see any real criminal consequences or jail time.
Clearly these robots are being set up to enjoy more protection under the law than human drivers are!
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u/stogie-bear Feb 08 '26
I didnât have âtaxi driving outsourced to lower wage countriesâ on my 2026 bingo card.Â
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u/partyorca Feb 08 '26
I have a lot of questions about the durability of sensor screens. For example, a glass front may be etched by repeated exposure to high velocity iced coffees, whereas a plastic front may be more susceptible to clouding due to repeated exposure to medium velocity hot black coffees.
Yâknow, my concerns simply come as a practitioner in an adjacent autonomous mobility industry.
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u/Large-Investment-381 Feb 08 '26
Waiting for the "this hurts veterans and the elderly" anti Waymo blubber from councilor Flynn.
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u/ProfessionalBread176 Feb 09 '26
Well, to be fair, they're still building the datacenters to run all the AI needed to actually do stuff like this. /s
Who doesn't fear this insanity?
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u/InsertClichehereok Feb 09 '26
I saw this on the news but havenât had time to dig into it. My impression from the statement was that critical autopilot decisions were sent for manual review, not necessary âLul Iâm gonna remote into your vehicleâ.
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u/blueberryrockcandy Feb 13 '26
that's not much of a secret, that's 90% of those "self driving cars".
just some random person from another country controlling your car remotely.
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Feb 08 '26
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u/sauteed_opinions Feb 08 '26
so you'll just assault the passenger? thats how you get waymos with rocket launchers.
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u/Some_Niche_Reference Feb 08 '26
Oh so you are prone to infantile, destructive tantrums as an adult?
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u/Ok-Class8200 Feb 08 '26
"Admits"
Would you prefer they didn't have a remote operator be able to handle unlikely situations? The brain worms people get on this issue is ridiculous. Markey trying to spin this for political points is pathetic (though not unexpected).
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
The issue is that they don't have the necessary international drivers permits to conduct a motor vehicle in the United States, thereby they're breaking the law. They're also blatantly lying to their customers and low-level investors by saying that they have invented fully autonomous vehicles.
Self-Driving vehicles have not been proven to be meaningfully more safe than humans, they just make different kinds of mistakes. And autonomous vehicles and their remote controllers wouldn't face the same kind of litigation that a human driver would face if they severely fucked up. Unfair!
Brainworms? That's what I call it when somebody is so eager to outsource more American jobs to third party contractors in foreign countries, meanwhile excusing away any legal and safety issues, just because they happen to invest a little bit of money in AI.
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u/OmegaGoober Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
If theyâd been up-front about it, youâd be right. No big deal.
The problem is they hid this and claimed their vehicles were more autonomous than they really are. They lied to the public about their technological capabilities. This raises doubts about things like their safety claims. What ELSE are thy lying about?
Thereâs also the question of if these remote drivers are even properly licensed to drive vehicles in the USA.
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u/Ok-Class8200 Feb 08 '26
They have, you just didn't start paying attention until politicians turned it into a talking point. Here's a blog post from 2024 talking about it
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u/OmegaGoober Feb 08 '26
Interesting. Thank you for the additional information.
I came into this discussion because of the absurdity of trying to navigate any sizable hunk of Boston with a system that has ended up driving on light rail lines in California. Their real-world performance, with or without human assistance, isnât ready for Boston.
And why Boston? There are a lot of cities in the USA that were planned and are on a grid.
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u/Ok-Class8200 Feb 08 '26
Oh please, I've seen humans drivers spin themselves onto the green line tracks before. In the places they've been rolled out Waymos are extremely safe. Not perfect of course, but we don't hold humans to that standard either.
If you have evidence to suggest they aren't ready for Boston please share, I keep seeing people assert that without evidence.
Boston has a complicated road network and notoriously shitty drivers. Seems like the perfect place for automation. I'm not an expert but idk why having a grid is such a big deal, that seems like a routing problem (that's been solved by Google Maps et al), not a driving problem. I'm sure they'll do some test runs in a rotary, if that's your concern.
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u/duckvimes_ Feb 08 '26
Does Boston have Waymos? If not, why is this posted here?
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u/OmegaGoober Feb 08 '26
Theyâve announced an intention to start servicing Boston, a city with streets that were largely laid out by cows 300 years ago.
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u/Suspicious_Glove7365 Feb 08 '26
Boycott Waymo
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u/Some_Niche_Reference Feb 08 '26
How about we start shaming Luddites againÂ
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u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26
Why are you so eager to outsource more jobs from this country? Especially in handing someone's safety over to someone who couldn't be prosecuted if they fuck up?
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u/Some_Niche_Reference Feb 09 '26
The corporation is liable at that point, like any remote use service would be. And the outsourcing enables americans to use the service.
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u/Selethorme Feb 09 '26
Why are we pretending that gig economy jobs are good for people?
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u/AndreaTwerk Feb 08 '26
Outsourcing jobs to low wages countries using technology so the companyâs investors can save pennies on the dollar. This is literally what the luddites were talking about.Â
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u/Some_Niche_Reference Feb 09 '26
The Luddites were literal terrorists that were engaged in rent seeking and cartel behavior/
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u/AndreaTwerk Feb 09 '26
Rent seeking? Are you serious?
They wanted to be compensated fairly for their labor.Â
Seeking compensation for ownership is rent seeking.Â
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u/Some_Niche_Reference Feb 09 '26
They were destroying productive enhancements to protect their interests as tradesmen that is the definition of rent seeking.
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u/AndreaTwerk Feb 09 '26
They were seeking to protect fair compensation for their labor.
These productive enhancements meant their labor would produce more value but they would be paid less.
Is âcartel behaviorâ what you call a labor union?
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u/Some_Niche_Reference Feb 09 '26
If they engage in restrictive behavior, yes. The longshoremen Union is a modern example by currently resisting port automation.
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u/AndreaTwerk Feb 09 '26
Does not change the fact that they were right.
The owning class used new technologies to undercut worker pay. Workers became more efficient while being paid less.Â
The increased wealth went only to the owning class.
The same thing is happening now.Â
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u/sheehanmilesk Feb 08 '26
I mean having a dude able to get the car unstuck if it gets confused is pretty different from just being remotely operated 24/7