Cruise confirms robotaxis rely on human assistance every 4 to 5 miles

So was the Cruise vehicle being remotely operated when it dragged the pedestrian 20 feet? (That's the impression I've had since this was initially reported)

The whole act of remotely operating automobiles on public streets strikes me as extremely dangerous, unaccountable, and that it'd be obviously prohibited by law.

AV advocates can at least argue the sensor suite provides far more data than a human driver has at their disposal. But a human driver on the other side of a wireless link working with a modicum of visual camera feedback and perhaps audio is unquestionably inferior to a licensed operator in the driver's seat. This is simply insanity unfolding on our city streets.

If they have that many interventions, you have to imagine there are situations of needed split second interventions that aren't able to happen.

Since they rely on HD mapping, a lot of them are probably when the environment is altered by construction etc. and if that was an overwhelming majority and can be detected far in advance of an operator being assigned I think it would more ok, maybe that's the case? I'm not sure that could add up to such a large percentage unless they handle it as an exception over and over again across the fleet when there is construction.

What does the vehicle do when it needs remote assistance and there is no cell connection?

I think that what you're imagining is like a driver who can let the car do its thing and just intervene now and then once every fifteen or twenty minutes. I believe that what the article is describing is a guy in front of a bank of monitors watching 15-20 cars and intervening in one or another pretty much constantly for the duration of a work shift.

> As far as the ratio of remote assistance advisors to driverless vehicles on the road, the Cruise spokesperson said, “During driverless operations there was roughly 1 remote assistant agent for every 15-20 driverless AVs.”

Yes, not to mention, you might be able to outsource the decisions to a low cost call center...

If you're going 5 miles and only get 4 before stopping mid-journey, is that acceptable? I would say no, I would not find it acceptable

Such frequent interventions means you need very reliable cell service. In times of heavy congestion (concerts, etc) that doesn't seem feasible.

Absolutely.

I knew one company who mined the Twitter firehose for events to sell to news stations and the government who had over 60% of the events identified and surfaced by dedicated employees, and 100% of the AI identified events were vetted by a person before going out.

Still valuable, but it was always telling how those employees were never really acknowledged outside of the company.

Of course. Amazon Go stores are a good example of this as well. As are all kinds of content filters across the internet. A large percent of "AI" is cheap labor in third world countries sitting in front of a computer and clicking buttons. And if human assistance isn't happening in real time, there is still a ridiculous amount of it in the training stages.

A UK company called spinvox blew up when it was revealed that their speech transcription tech was actually a warehouse filled with people in Pakistan. In that case the blow up was due to data protection laws in the first instance, and investor confidence in the second instance. They had, of course, told everyone that their transcription system was a giant e-brain.

Neither 60% nor 4-5 miles sound fine to me...