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Waymo Reveals Remote Workers In Philippines Sometimes Advise Its Driverless Cars (newsweek.com) 75

Posted by EditorDavid from the very-remote-workers dept.
Waymo surprised U.S. lawmakers Wednesday during a hearing on autonomous vehicles and their safety and oversight. Newsweek reports: During questioning, Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked what happens when a Waymo vehicle encounters a driving situation it cannot independently resolve. "The Waymo phones a human friend for help," Markey explained, adding that the vehicle communicates with a "remote assistance operator." Markey criticized the lack of public information about these workers, despite their role in vehicle safety...

[Dr. Mauricio Peña, chief safety officer at Waymo] responded by clarifying the scope of the operators' involvement: "They provide guidance, they do not remotely drive the vehicles," Peña said. "Waymo asks for guidance in certain situations and gets input, but Waymo is always in charge of the dynamic driving task," according to EVShift. Pressed further on where those operators are located, Peña told lawmakers that some are based in the United States and others abroad, though he did not have an exact breakdown. After additional questioning, he confirmed that overseas operators are located in the Philippines...

The disclosure prompted sharp criticism from Markey, who raised concerns about security and labor implications. "Having people overseas influencing American vehicles is a safety issue," he said. "The information the operators receive could be out of date. It could introduce tremendous cyber security vulnerabilities," according to People. Markey also pointed to job displacement, noting that autonomous vehicles already affect taxi and rideshare drivers in the U.S. Waymo defended the practice in comments to People, saying the use of overseas staff is part of a broader effort to scale operations globally.
Waymo also defended the remote workers to Newsweek as licensed drivers reviewed for "driving-related convictions" and other traffic violations who are also "randomly screened for drug use."

Thanks to Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.
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Waymo Reveals Remote Workers In Philippines Sometimes Advise Its Driverless Cars More

Waymo Reveals Remote Workers In Philippines Sometimes Advise Its Driverless Cars

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  • More of the AI patina is rubbing off (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday February 07, 2026 @06:05PM (#65975118)

    Amazon Go stores employed hundreds of low-paid Indian workers in offshore sweatshops [businessinsider.com] while pretending their AI was magically determining everything people put into their baskets and carts.

    And now, we see Waymo is doing basically the same thing. While the congress-critters were focusing on the off-shoring aspect, I wish they'd asked exactly how many times per trip the Waymo AI "asked" the humans for assistance - that could've been enlightening.

    • Amazon Go was obviously a scam (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      When I tried it out with my girlfriend we used the same cart. It took half a day to get our invoices. There was never any doubt about who took what off the shelf. We didn't do anything cute like put stuff back on the shelf or try to hide what we are doing. No computer works that slow, so clearly the reason it took so long was the process was being done by people and we made it hard by having two people share a cart.

      I went back later and they had normal checkers at the exit and eventually Amazon killed the w

    • Re:More of the AI patina is rubbing off (Score:5, Funny)

      by lucifuge31337 ( 529072 ) <daryl.introspect@net> on Saturday February 07, 2026 @06:29PM (#65975152) Homepage
      AI: Actually Indians

    • Re:More of the AI patina is rubbing off (Score:5, Informative)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Saturday February 07, 2026 @10:07PM (#65975408)
      Waymo has always been open about this - except perhaps the location of the people doing the monitoring.

      • Really? Why are all sources for this story saying it was revealed only after waymo was grilled in a Congress inquiry, then?

        • Re: More of the AI patina is rubbing off (Score:4, Informative)

          by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Sunday February 08, 2026 @11:15AM (#65976016)
          How's this from 2024:

          Much like phone-a-friend, when the Waymo vehicle encounters a particular situation on the road, the autonomous driver can reach out to a human fleet response agent for additional information to contextualize its environment. The Waymo Driver does not rely solely on the inputs it receives from the fleet response agent and it is in control of the vehicle at all times. As the Waymo Driver waits for input from fleet response, and even after receiving it, the Waymo Driver continues using available information to inform its decisions. This is important because, given the dynamic conditions on the road, the environment around the car can change, which either remedies the situation or influences how the Waymo Driver should proceed. In fact, the vast majority of such situations are resolved, without assistance, by the Waymo Driver.

          A fleet response agent has a suite of tools to help them understand what a Waymo vehicle encounters on the road. For example, fleet response can view real-time feeds from the vehicleâ(TM)s exterior cameras and a 3D graphical representation of what the car perceives around it. They can also rewind available feeds to understand the immediate scene better.

          https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05... [waymo.com]

          As to how it's reported, I truly think yellow journalism / clickbaiting / scandal-mongering in the media has become endemic. I feel like very few news sources bother or choose to report all the facts that a neutral observer would consider relevant. Instead they just build a "story" to appeal to an audience - using true facts usually, but selectively.

          • They could have just said "we hire a lot of Filipinos on the cheap to drive taxis remotely" and no meaning would have been lost.

            • again, false statement.

              the remote ops do NOT 'drive' the car 100% of the time. what percentage? we dont know but I'd guess its less than 10%, probably even lower.

              nothing is level 5 yet. get that in your head. no one claims level 5, either.

              what I'd like to know is how often waymo needs 'help' remotely vs tesla vs any other.

              I suspect that tesla that is sensor-poor needs 10x as much help as waymo.

              (I used to work in car biz, in a self driving car co.)

      • Indeed, and if one person can help out (say) 5-10 cars getting to their destinations, then that's a taxi with only a tenth of a driver. They've shaved off 9/10ths, and are angling to make that 19/20ths and so on. It doesn't have to be 100% autonomous to be useful, or indeed "AI driven". In fact, if anything, it tells us something about the car manufacturers that claim to have "full self driving" coming any day now...

        Way back in the day, some people found that if you played a recording of a voice agent sayin

    • Always remember AI does not equal Artificial Intelligence. It means Actually India. It's an almost certainty that a lot of what companies are pushing off on us as AI is actually people in 3rd world sweat shops controlling the puppets.

  • Not who you want in charge of road safety.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Saturday February 07, 2026 @06:07PM (#65975120)
    I mean, this is a country where babies don't wear motorcycle helmets.

    • To be fair, babies don't really drive a lot of motorcycles.

      • It's pretty common to see a family of five on a motorbike there, no I am not joking.

        • Why single babies out, all five won't wear helmets. Actually could be six, if the woman is pregnant.

          Anytime I rented a bike there everyone was surprised that I asked for two helmets, that I insisted they are new and that we actually put them on.

          • Just the contrast really. Nobody cares in US if an adult rides without helmet, but putting babies on motorbikes is unthinkable and in cars anything less than a 5 point safety harness is full stop villainy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by quenda ( 644621 )

          It's pretty common to see a family of five on a motorbike there, no I am not joking.

          The economic progress allowing ordinary Indians or Filipinos to buy motor scooters, and the limited carrying capacity has been a big driver of lower fertility rates.
          Its really hard to fit six people on a 100cc Honda.

            A new trend I've noticed in Australia is seeing a family of four on an e-bike. They'd never do it on a motorcycle, but somehow a cargo e-bike is OK.

      • Could have been worse...
        - Italians or French (known for their scrupulous obedience to traffic laws)
        - British (left? right? It's OK, guvnah!)

    • America requires babies to wear helmets when driving motorcycles?

      I'm surprised.

      I'd have expected American motorcycle babies to be maximising their legal disruptiveness by being required to shoot passers-by. Why not - they're under the age of legal responsibility. Until it comes to the consequences of violating their NDA.

      • We teach our babies to never shoot from motorcycles. The recoil can be dangerous.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          We teach our babies to never shoot from motorcycles. The recoil can be dangerous.

          And rightly so, children should not be taught to use individual firearms.

          They're much better suited to crew served weapons, the stationary nature of crew served weapons means their relative individual strength is less of a drawback and it promotes co-operation and teamwork.

          • and it promotes co-operation and teamwork.

            Don't say things like that - it'll inspire fear, uncertainty and doubt amongst Trump and the tecbrodudes.

            What are you - some sort of pinko-commie-subresive? Or even (say it not in Gath!) a Canadian?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      I mean, this is a country where babies don't wear motorcycle helmets.

      Scarily enough, the Philippines is not the worst place I've seen for driving, easily outperformed by Thailand, where you've a reincarnation religion in a place where life is cheap (combined with an attitude of "if I die, I die"). Pinoys are relative paragons of safe driving in comparison.

      The big issue with the Phils is road quality, once you get of the NLEX and SCTEX motorways you've got potholes the size of small lakes.

  • Someone should tip Markey off that the situations is far worse. We actually have foreigners flying planes in US airspace.

    • Foreign pilots do fly in US airspace, however it's way more difficult to get a pilots license around the world than a drivers license is.

    • Because, as we all know, part 129 requirements for foreign airliners are totally equivalent to whatever hiring standards waymo feels like using for their offshore call center. Clearly equivalent situations.
  • We need way mo disclosures like this from these companies.

  • If a remote worker operates a vahicle in the US, do they need a valid US driving licence do be legally allowed to do it?

    • The US is a signatory of the Geneva Convention on Road Traffic; so just an IDP and a drivers' license from another signatory state(or a Vienna Convention on Road Traffic signatory) would probably do at least in the short term. Not sure that the question of ongoing operation on US roads by someone who remains subject to a different state's licensing requirements has been addressed; since historically it would have been purely hypothetical.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cmad_x ( 723313 )

        Not sure that the question of ongoing operation on US roads by someone who remains subject to a different state's licensing requirements has been addressed; since historically it would have been purely hypothetical.

        The situation you describe here is actually quite common. From the Texas Department of Public Safety [texas.gov]:

        Driving privilege reciprocity allows a person to use a valid, unexpired foreign license to operate a motor vehicle in Texas for up to one year or until a person becomes a Texas resident, whichever date is sooner.

        I've encountered similar wording in every US state I've been in.

        But in any case, I think they're precisely trying to maneuver themselves out of this situation altogether. Quoting from the article:

        “They provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles,” Peña told the Senate committee.

        "Providing guidance" ... Slick. Let's see how that goes.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by djgl ( 6202552 )

        But the US in contrast to the Philippines did not sign the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic signatory. The signs in the US are completely different from the ones I had to learn for my EU driving license. And as far as I know, there are even some rules that differ from US state to US state, e.g. turning right on a red traffic light. I would not dare to claim that I know the US rules better than a Waymo car.

  • I'm removing the app, I don't want to support any American company that off shores critical support like this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      You sure showed them! Now go ahead and uninstall every other app on your phone.
      • Every foreign-based smartphone app can be replaced in two weeks. Big fuckin' deal for toxic globalists like you. Go chew on a Li+ battery.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )
          I'm reasonably certain you were trying to make some sort of point there, not sure exactly what it was though. Have a cup of coffee and give it another try.

      • Fun story time, I do think if more people voted with their wallet instead of belly aching on the internet, things might change and if it doesn't, I can say I tried. I don't think my one vote matters but if everybody followed in the same footsteps, you can bet their business practices would change quickly.

        I hope you can find some encouragement in my response. Have a good weekend =).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )
          If I thought I could make a difference I would, but: 1) I don't use Waymo, so I have no horse in the race. 2) If you think support for something like this is ever going to be on-shored again I've got some bad news for you. I don't necessary like it either, but what's the other option? How much extra would it cost if paying the support staff costed 10x more, and is that sustainable?

          You have a good weekend as well.
  • It makes perfect sense to have people in non-American time zones providing some of the coverage. Otherwise you'd need night shift operators, and Google doesn't really do that. Not exactly the sort of thing you handle with a pager, you know?

  • Real life Captcha solvers (Score:3)

    by Uldis Segliņš ( 4468089 ) on Sunday February 08, 2026 @02:12AM (#65975576)
    Mark all pictures with child crossing the road, you have 1 second to possible impact.

  • Microsoft has Copilot, Waymo has Backseat Driver.

  • The things I do for money, I'll never understand
    I used to be quite critical but now I find I'm cynical
    A lady with a starving baby miles away from me
    No problems there, just life and death
    What the hell is wrong with me
    And everybody else

    No questions asked
    Just get receipts and write them off
    Expenses - taxes are a bitch these days
    Yet the lady and the baby starve
    Waiting for a contribution in a UNICEF box
    In a drugstore in this ugly little town

    The things I do for money
    I'll never understand
    The world is just a marble

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