82% of Waymo's autonomous miles in California were human supervised in 2024
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It was never a secret that Waymo had remote monitors. Does this "monitoring" count as "supervised"?
Or does "supervised" mean that the cars were actively being remotely controlled? As in Tesla's recent robotic demos.
I'd guess the law doesn't require this distinction to be reported, so it isn't :(
In my opinion - even from that definition - it still looks like level 2 autonomy: "the car sorta kinda does what it's expected, but a (remote) operator is always ready to step in and correct," whether this is "keeps the lane when driving straight" or "needs to be prodded through a left turn across traffic" is not a meaningful distinction.
A meaningful distinction would involve how much "monitoring" or "supervision" is being employed.
For example, if the robotaxi needs remote help maintaining it's lane, I'd argue it is not really "autonomous" at all --- every car would probably require 1 active, dedicated remote human "monitor". Given the inherent shortcomings of wireless communication, I'd argue Waymo crashes would be occurring on an everyday basis if this were the case.
On the other hand, if 1 person is remotely "monitoring" 100 cars waiting for a remote request from either a vehicle or it's occupant, I'd argue this is indeed a very significant level of autonomy.
The obvious problem with the original claim is that it is lacking this sort of meaningful insight.
Based on my research, Waymo claims to employ 2800 people across 6 continents to deliver 20K robo trips per day at all hours. Either everybody working at Waymo is a "monitor" or there is some significant autonomy going on to achieve this.
I mean, level 2 is great stuff, wonderful progress. Nowhere near actual autonomous vehicles though: "works well until it suddenly doesn't, and then we need someone to put it back on track."
Even a 80/20 solution operates autonomously _most of the time_, but the problem remains: it's hard to predict when it will stray from the happy path and need help.
Tesla's robotaxi strategy looks a lot like Waymo's - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43025461 - Feb 2025
It turns out that self driving cannot be solved in the near term without a team of humans helping the robot drive from a far. But if you pretend you’re not a taxi company, you can command higher equity valuations.