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Those Waymo robotaxis? Humans in other countries drive them [1]

['Séamus Bellamy']

Date: 2026-02-12  

We don't have a cure for cancer, or personal jetpacks to use on our commute to work, and if they can actually get AI to work, millions will lose their jobs. But hey, at least one thing from the future is panning out: self-driving vehicles. Soon, the roads will be bustling with fully autonom—aw, crap.

According to Business Insider, a recent policy hearing on self-driving cars left the United States government so far up Waymo's ass that it could count as a proctoscopy. While the focus of the inquiry was on how much the Alphabet-owned self-driving car company was relying on hardware and infrastructures built outside of the United States, that wasn't the eyebrow-raising bit for me. Those self-driving cars? NOT. SELF. DRIVING. As the article points out, the vehicles use "human operators in countries outside the US".

Over at Futurist, it was stated that this tidbit was further clarified, later in the hearing: some of the people controlling Waymo's cabs live in the United States (oh good). But many more live a lot further away, including locales like the Philippines. But the cars are still totally self-driving!

"They provide guidance… They do not remotely drive the vehicles. Waymo asks for guidance in certain situations and gets an input, but the Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving tasks, so that is just one additional input."

So, that's awkward.

Given the number of accidents, including recently smacking into a kid outside of an elementary school, I'm not sure which puts Waymo in a bigger legal bind: creating tech that runs over folks, or employing tele remote operators responsible for the occurrence.

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2026/02/12/those-waymo-robotaxis-humans-in-other-countries-drive-them.html

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