Autopilot in a car? No, he’s a guy from… the Philippines
AI autonomous only when everything goes perfectly
In a world where robotaxi and “full autonomy” are sold as the future of transportation, Waymo has just reminded everyone that behind that autonomy is often a human. Sometimes in the USA, sometimes on the other side of the world, sitting at the computer and saving the situation when the AI is out of breath. In other words – it’s not magic, just… outsourcing.
Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s chief security officer, admitted during a Senate hearing that when a robotaxi encounters an unusual situation, the system can hand over control to remote drivers. And yes, some of them live in the USA. But many work from the Philippines. Thanks to this, we can realize that the AI industry still largely uses work performed manually by people, and what is more, it is often poorly paid.
So when an autonomous car for PLN 200,000 dollars doesn’t know what to do at the intersection, a guy from Manila takes over, with a connection delay and probably a cold coffee next to the keyboard.
This is not the first time it turns out that “autonomous systems” have human “lifelines.” Tesla still sends people inside the robotaxi to make sure the car doesn’t do anything stupid. Presto Automation boasted of the so-called “autonomous drive-thru”, but most orders were handled by… Filipinos on headphones. Amazon advertised “Just Walk Out” as a store without checkouts. In practice, purchases were monitored by employees in India clicking the video frame by frame.
It is also worth mentioning the situation from 2024 when Tesla showed its robots at the “We, Robot” event. A moment later it turned out that they also rely on remote operators. And then one robot fell on stage because the operator took off the headset and the robot… copied its movement. Full autonomy.
This brings to mind the running gag from Scooby Doo where Fred exposes evil – and in this case we have a global call center disguised as autonomous technology.
During the hearing, Senator Ed Markey said hiring foreign operators was “totally unacceptable.” It wasn’t even about security – although delaying the signal from the Philippines does sound like a recipe for disaster. The point was that Waymo uses workers from outside the US, and that always causes allergies in politics. And then there are Chinese cars – because Waymo uses cars from various countries, including China. This raised suspicions that Alphabet was trying to circumvent import restrictions. Peña assured that autonomous systems were being installed in the US, but senators still turned up their noses.
