Amazon admitted that they had a bunch of people in India looking at the camera feeds and validating orders post-facto. The media took this as "the Indian workers are processing your Amazon Fresh purchase, not the computers" which is disingenuous at best. And yeah, it sounds like Waymos usually, nearly always are fully autonomous.

The huge, gargantuan, enormous difference is that, in Waymo's case, the overseas folks are taking control of a fucking car. That's not post-facto like the Amazon thing. And, more importantly, the ramifications of even the tiniest mistake are massive by comparison.

Indian Amazon guy screws up? Shoot, I paid for two heads of lettuce when I only got one. Filipino Waymo guy screws up? Car accident.

By the way: Imagine driving a real, actual car with trans-oceanic ping.

It also proves that Waymo's capabilities are overstated. I keep getting pushback when I complain about specific situations in this forum about how Waymo thinks about complex situations - and this entire time, it may have been humans navigating them.