A quiet revelation is emerging: Waymo’s robotaxis may drive themselves on U.S. roads, but many of their most critical decisions are still made by human operators sitting thousands of miles away in the Philippines. Waymo, after all, is owned by Google’s parent company. Autonomy, it seems, is layered.
Waymo has long been held up as the gold standard of autonomous driving, a symbol of how far artificial intelligence has progressed beyond human control. Yet testimony at a recent U.S. Senate hearing has exposed a less visible but increasingly important reality: when Waymo’s vehicles encounter situations they cannot resolve on their own, responsibility often shifts to remote human workers, many of whom are based in the Philippines.
The disclosure by Waymo’s chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, cut through years of marketing around “driverless” technology. Peña told lawmakers that in rare or complex scenarios, Waymo’s robotaxis can hand over control to remote operators who guide the vehicle through the situation. These workers act as a form of last-resort intelligence, stepping in when sensors, software, and pre-trained models are insufficient to safely navigate the real world.
This reminds me of an experience many of us had during industrial training in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. You would leave Port Harcourt in a new vehicle, driven by a polished professional. Everything felt regulated, certified, and safe. Then, somewhere around Ogoni on the way to Ikot Abasi, the road ended, and the sea began.
To cross it, you boarded a small speedboat manned by a driver who might not even be allowed through the gates of the oil company, often visibly drinking. Once the boat took off, all power and influence shifted. The man at the helm was a human “fish”, someone who could survive what you could not in the sea. Ironically, most people on board had swimming certificates, yet none could swim well enough to matter. In that moment, safety protocols dissolved, replaced by an uncomfortable trust in informal expertise. Yes, the roads are great for professional drivers but on the sea, anything could go!
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There is an Igbo saying: a bird that flies off the ground only to perch on an anthill is still very much on the ground. Waymo’s autonomy fits this wisdom. If its most critical decisions are still made by human operators in the Philippines, then the real question is no longer just about Waymo’s engineering.
It is about who those humans are, how they are trained, and how much judgment we are delegating to people we never see. In the age of AI, technology may scale but accountability remains stubbornly human.
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