Turns out Tesla’s “self-driving” taxis have drivers
Despite years of promises about driverless tech, Tesla says its robotaxis still rely on humans who can step in and drive when things go wrong. As Tesla’s future is based on robotaxis and humanoid robots, this seems like quite a problem.
The February hearing, convened by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, once again highlighted that despite their best efforts to make it seem like there is no human in the loop, companies like Waymo continue to rely on them for the most delicate moments during their operations — even if Waymo’s remote operators technically never take over control over the wheel, as a spokesperson took pains to clarify at the time.
Committee member and senator Ed Markey (D-MA) has led the charge for more transparency into the matter. As Wired reports, a series of letters he received from seven different robotaxi companies, including Tesla, Amazon’s Zoox, and Nuro, detail how humans remain a core part of their purportedly autonomous driving ambitions.
Tesla’s response stood out, revealing that its human operators do, in fact, temporarily take control of the vehicle if necessary. That’s in contrast to Waymo’s approach, which involves its team intervening to make higher-level decisions on where the stuck car should navigate next.
For all the talk of AI, the system still falls back on the oldest technology in transportation: a person steering the vehicle.
I wonder where these safety drivers are. Some of them are reportedly in chase cars, but I figure eventually they'll all end up outsourced to former call centers wherever. Or maybe the same folks who do the work behind those supposed checkerless stores.
Well, people are just cogs in the machine that is Tesla, the purpose of which is to give money to the muskrat. So if the “machine” doing the driving is a bunch of silicon and software or a person somewhere far away, it is all the same to the company. They don’t see this as any kind of lie, because to them it isn’t one.