Yes, I think this is counting on the ignorance that people will believe there are "drone operators" at the console, halfway across the world, who are driving our cars [A.I. stands for "Actually Indians"?]
The way I understood the liability conversation, several years ago, was that each "autonomous vehicle" would have a corresponding operator of record, a licensed driver, who would be the responsible person for the vehicle's behavior. That there would be a designated person to carry insurance and licensing and be personally responsible and personally answer to criminal or civil charges if "their" vehicle got in a fix.
Honestly this model doesn't make any sense, as Waymo has set it up so that the only driver is the Waymo Driver making decisions, because the Waymo Driver is the only one who's privy to 100% the real-time data.
The remote CSRs, whether they're in Philippines or stateside engineers on an escalation, are explicitly not driving the car but giving it suggestions. If they need someone to "drive the car" they literally dispatch a human who gets behind the wheel, and that's how it works.
>Yes, I think this is counting on the ignorance that people will believe there are "drone operators" at the console, halfway across the world, who are driving our cars [A.I. stands for "Actually Indians"?]
...
>Honestly this model doesn't make any sense, as Waymo has set it up so that the only driver is the Waymo Driver making decisions, because the Waymo Driver is the only one who's privy to 100% the real-time data.
Their competitor Telsa does use teleoperation in their "robotaxis"? So what is ignorant about believing it to be the case in this scenario?
The article you link literally says that Tesla's teleoperation is the same kind as Waymo's, and there is nothing that the company has ever deployed that will enable "remote drone operators" so I don't know what your point is.
Tesla and Waymo both offer systems to provide sensor insight to remote observers, and the remote observers can send suggestions and nudges to the vehicles. The general public does not understand the nuance here, and they imagine someone is sitting with a steering wheel and pedals, like a radio-controlled toy or a USAF Reaper drone.
> Our remote operators are transported into the device’s world using a state-of-the-art VR rig that allows them to remotely perform complex and intricate tasks. Working with hardware teams, you will drive requirements, make design decisions and implement software integration for this custom teleoperation system.
The article notes that this is very unlike what Waymo is doing:
> This should enable Tesla to launch a service similar to Waymo without having to achieve a “superhuman level of miles between disengagement.”
> similar to Waymo
> taking a page out of Waymo’s book
> something that [...] Waymo has already deployed
> one thing that Tesla is taking from Waymo’s approach
> interesting to learn the level of teleoperation Tesla plans to deploy
Basically, this article you linked is reporting only on a job description. The job posting is for an engineer, not a teleoperator! The job posting touts the VR environment that will be used to "drive requirements", not vehicles! What company would hire a highly-skilled and credentialed engineer to be a drone pilot? It is absurd.
The general public may not fully understand this nuance. The entire point of autonomous operation is to remove humans from the decision loop and permit the machine to use its own sensors to make rapid decisions in real-time. As autonomy is refined, remote operators will intervene less and less. And as sensors are refined, humans will have less insight than the AI onboard, due to our inability to directly process those signals.
The author does not know "what level" of teleops Tesla wants to implement. But why even attempt to implement FSD or top-level autonomy, if your operators are doing the driving anyway?
This would never scale. We already discussed the incident where Waymo's disengagement overwhelmed their remote techs and it was an undesirable edge-case. In order to operate a robotaxi fleet, the disengages and takeovers need to be safe, legal, and rare.
The way I understood the liability conversation, several years ago, was that each "autonomous vehicle" would have a corresponding operator of record, a licensed driver, who would be the responsible person for the vehicle's behavior. That there would be a designated person to carry insurance and licensing and be personally responsible and personally answer to criminal or civil charges if "their" vehicle got in a fix.
Honestly this model doesn't make any sense, as Waymo has set it up so that the only driver is the Waymo Driver making decisions, because the Waymo Driver is the only one who's privy to 100% the real-time data.
The remote CSRs, whether they're in Philippines or stateside engineers on an escalation, are explicitly not driving the car but giving it suggestions. If they need someone to "drive the car" they literally dispatch a human who gets behind the wheel, and that's how it works.