Waymo executives admitted Wednesday that when their autonomous vehicles get confused, they sometimes call someone in the Philippines for help. The company prefers to describe these workers as "overseas contextual navigation specialists" rather than "guys named Steve who tell the robot what to do."
The groundbreaking disclosure came during a Senate hearing when Chief Safety Officer Dr. Mauricio Peña was forced to explain what happens when a $200,000 self-driving car equipped with 29 cameras, 5 radars, and more computing power than the Apollo moon mission encounters a slightly confusing traffic cone.
"They phone a friend," Peña explained, using air quotes so vigorous he nearly injured a nearby stenographer.
Senator Ed Markey appeared visibly confused by the revelation that America's most advanced robotic vehicles sometimes require someone 8,000 miles away to tell them whether that thing in the road is a plastic bag or an existential threat.
"Let me get this straight," Markey said, squinting at notes that simply read "WHAT??" in large letters. "Your car has the same strategy for navigating San Francisco as I do for answering Jeopardy questions?"
Waymo insists the overseas operators — who the company definitely does not call "remote drivers" because that would sound bad — merely provide "contextual guidance," much like a GPS tells you to turn right, except this GPS has to pass a background check and knows that a pickup truck blocking two lanes isn't a new type of architecture.
When pressed for the exact number of operators based overseas versus in the United States, Peña admitted he didn't have those figures readily available, a response that senators found "very curious" for someone ostensibly running a program where split-second decisions determine whether a two-ton vehicle plows into a fire hydrant.
Industry insiders are calling it the natural evolution of American innovation: why pay a U.S. worker $25 per hour to remotely supervise your self-driving car when a Filipino contractor can do it for a fraction of the cost, albeit with a 12-hour time difference and the constant threat of typhoons knocking out their internet connection?
The hearing comes one week after a Waymo robotaxi struck a child near a Santa Monica elementary school, an incident that federal investigators are now reviewing to determine whether the vehicle was autonomous at the time of impact or if Steve was on his lunch break.
In a statement, the company emphasized that all "Fleet Response Agents" undergo thorough training, background checks, and are tested for their ability to say "maybe don't do that" with appropriate urgency when a car in California decides that a red light is more of a suggestion.
Following the hearing, Waymo announced it was rebranding its technology from "fully autonomous" to "autonomous-ish" and promised that one day, possibly by 2087, their cars might actually be able to navigate a construction zone without help from someone earning $15 an hour on the other side of the planet.