During a Congressional hearing, Waymo's chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company's reliance on overseas workers.
  • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    7·
    4 hours ago

    Curious what the law is with regard to someone in the Philipines driving a car on US roads without a US driver’s license.

  • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    6 hours ago

    For anyone that is curious, Waymo actually is capable of remote moving the vehicles despite what they say. They do their best not to admit it’s possible, but it’s right in the CPUC filings as a footnote, and probably the only place they’ll ever admit it.

    https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/consumer-protection-and-enforcement-division/documents/tlab/av-programs/tcp0038152a-waymo-al-0003_a1b.pdf

    In very limited circumstances such as to facilitate movement of the AV out of a freeway lane onto an adjacent shoulder, if possible, our Event Response agents are able to remotely move the Waymo AV under strict parameters, including at a very low speed over a very short distance.

    I’m not opposed or knocking that they can do this, but they are lying to or misleading people when they say it can’t be done.

  • Jason2357@lemmy.caEnglish
    171·
    12 hours ago

    Automation has always been about de-skilling to cheaper, more abuse-able labour, and not about actually eliminating work. This goes all the way back to the broad looms and the luddites. There were still loom workers in the new factories - its just that they were children who could be worked to death for pennies.

  • Deacon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    16 hours ago

    This would have actually been a great thing to not only acknowledge but promote if they weren’t so caught up in their own hype.

    Not that I will ever get into one of those death traps but if you tell the average consumer that any failures in autonomy immediately engage a tele-operator “to keep you moving on your way” they would probably feel better about riding.

    I’ve done tele-driving before and it’s remarkably good, even if latency is a concern.

    It’s the facade of it all, the need to seem to live up to the hype. It’s going to get more people killed.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      10 hours ago

      any failures in autonomy immediately engage a tele-operator

      One of the problems is that these “failures in autonomy” could include a failure to engage a tele-operator when one is needed.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      12 hours ago

      I work near downtown Austin, where both Waymo and Robotaxi operate.

      Waymo cars are some of the best drivers on the road because they actuallyt ested their product, use multiple Lidar sensors instead of just cameras, and have remote driver backups for unusual situations.

      Teslas drive like maniacs and will end a ride and tell the driver to get out in the middle of a lane.

    • nixon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      10·
      14 hours ago

      I’ve ridden in a few Waymo’s before, in SF they can be more dependable or easier to get than other ride options. I never felt like I was ever in danger in one.

      Within my handful of experiences with them I’ve never had to use the help button or features to request assistance from a tele-operator but it was clear that they weren’t trying to hide the function from the passengers as the feature was explained and clearly labeled.

      A friend who uses them often told me of the one time he needed to ask for assistance when their Waymo was stuck behind a doordash scooter with its hazard lights on that was either delivering or picking up and blocking a turn lane in downtown SF. The Waymo didn’t know what to do to get around it, my friend hit the button for assistance, a voice came over the speakers asking how they could help, my friend explained the situation and the tele-operator drove the car to safely navigate the situation. He said it was probably 1.5-2mins of tota inconvenience with 75% of that time was him wondering if he should hit the help button or not.

      I understand a lot of AI implementation, such as Amazon Fresh or other business models have been hiding offshored human assistance within their “AI” features, which I do agree with you is deceitful but my experience with Waymo was not that. They did not hide or obfuscate that function and feature of the service but actively informed the passenger of its existence.

      Granted, I haven’t ridden in one for almost a year at this point and I only did so in the SF market so things may have changed since or are different elsewhere.

      Also, I can’t say that I follow the news intently about Waymo, I know they have run over a couple cats but I hadn’t heard anything about them killing people. Has that happened?

  • THE_GR8_MIKE@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    13 hours ago

    I still have no idea how these are legally able to operate on public roads. Shit seems wild to me. Wouldn’t last 5 seconds here in Chicago, for numerous reasons lol

    • GalacticSushi@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      2·
      7 hours ago

      Well bribery and corruption are illegal only in theory and only if you don’t call it “lobbying.” Google has a lot of money so it really doesn’t matter (to the people making the rules) if these things should be on the road or not.

  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    15 hours ago

    This is way better than Robo Taxi convoys of 2 chase cars following one driverless vehicle. A fraction of the footprint and manpower cost of Musk’s venture.

  • Bappity@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    15 hours ago

    the same thing happened with that Amazon shop that you could apparently take anything out without checking out and it would automatically charge your account…

    turns out they had workers watching the camera footage