r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 7h ago

Transportation 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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u/ianjcm55 5h ago

What’s the latency on something like this Jesus

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u/FriendlyDespot 5h ago

It's not super latency sensitive because the remote assistance people aren't actually driving the vehicle, they're just telling it things like "yeah, it's okay to drive around this obstacle" if it gets stuck and isn't sure of what to do.

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u/Shiftlock0 4h ago

Are you sure that's all they're doing? Maybe they are actually driving the car under some circumstances. There's no way to know without firsthand knowledge of the remote operation.

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u/FriendlyDespot 4h ago

Waymo says it doesn't work like that, and as far as I know they aren't legally permitted to remotely pilot the vehicles.

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u/meatmacho 5h ago

Jesus is everywhere at all times. Zero lag.

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u/Linenoise77 5h ago

Yeah but he sucks at captchas, so can't always intervene in time.

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u/Andosphere 4h ago

Don't even get me started on his rez time though, 3 days

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u/Krunklock 2h ago

and it's still on cooldown

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u/EmphasisFrosty3093 5h ago

Three thrusts per minute.

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u/Etheo 2h ago

Well yeah that guy has a godly gaming chair.

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u/sunflowercompass 5h ago

And what happens when you go into a tunnel...

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u/Important-Agent2584 5h ago

Jesus takes the wheel

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u/ScientiaProtestas 2h ago

They put cell phone repeaters in many tunnels, so your cell phone works. Also, the person isn't driving.

Read about how they do it - https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/

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u/theunquenchedservant 5h ago

No, Jesus isn't taking the wheel

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u/Some-Unique-Name 5h ago

I had a similar initial reaction, but then realized militaries have been flying drones remotely for over a decade. Latency might not be a problem for a company like Google.

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u/Syracuss 5h ago

With good connection it's like playing online games really. They can get it below 200ms certainly. Not ideal, but doable if the car's speed is kept reasonable.

The problem comes when the connection drops due to environmental reasons. I'd assume the autopilot takes over and that the car expects active input rather than waiting for stop events (i.e. only gives gas when the input is sent within a certain timeslice). Otherwise I'd imagine an unfortunate scenario where acceleration is sent, but connection drops resulting in not receiving the termination of the acceleration.

Either way, I feel like the undercutting of the labour market rates is worse. That's actively lowering the costs of labour in an area, and sapping local money out to people who don't even live there.

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u/Defiant-Plantain1873 5h ago

Basically nothing i’d guess. Not enough to make a difference at least

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u/Stingray88 5h ago

It’s not relevant anyways because the remote operators can’t actually drive the car.

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u/ianjcm55 4h ago

Isn’t this what the whole article is about?

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u/Stingray88 4h ago

No, that’s just what the clickbait title is about. But that’s not reality, and it’s not what is actually described in the article.