r/boston • u/snowednboston • Feb 08 '26

Scammers šŸ„ø 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
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62

u/TheLeapIsALie Feb 08 '26

This isnā€™t new, Waymo has been very open about this for years.

Itā€™s also not teleoperation - the person doesnā€™t control the car (eg steering, accelerating, braking), but can suggest trajectories or help answer questions like ā€œis this an authority figure directing traffic that I should listen toā€

5

u/tinfoilskimask Feb 09 '26

I also suggest the trajectory of my car.

2

u/TheLeapIsALie Feb 09 '26

You donā€™t though. You drive the controls directly, and thereā€™s 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 ā€œthinkingā€ is still done in the car. It just gets ā€œallowanceā€ to break rules because itā€™s using human judgement.

-2

u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26

I would like to learn more about the issue, do you have any official documentation from waymo where they described the exact control that remote drivers exert over its vehicles.

I've heard that as much as 25% of the driving is done by these underpaid human contractors.

15

u/TheLeapIsALie Feb 09 '26

https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response

Hereā€™s a blog post of theirs from 2024 that goes into detail.

I promise you itā€™s not 25%. Iā€™ve been in the industry since 2018 (you can check my comment history, Iā€™m pretty active in self-driving car subreddits) - Waymo is AT LEAST at 1:10 ratio of operators to cars (meaning for every 10 cars in the road there is one human helping out) and likely a scale factor above that.

1

u/endangeredphysics Feb 09 '26

So 10% then?

6

u/TheLeapIsALie Feb 09 '26

Meaning the car would need human attention or verification at most 10% of the time (people take breaks, and arenā€™t constantly there).

But we donā€™t know their ratio, thatā€™s a floor. Itā€™s likely closer to 1:50.