Tesla Is Looking to Hire a Team to Remotely Control Its 'Self-Driving' Robotaxis

Ah yes, you know what's better than a taxi driver? A taxi driver who relies on a camera with a limited field of vision, experiences input and video lag, and receives none of the tactile sensations that allow drivers to gauge road conditions.

“Remotely control”, or “drive” if you will.

3 weeks later:

"Your honour, it was the ping!"

Hey more jobs for taxi drivers and safer to do from the comfort of your home. Just like a drone pilot!

Who would have thought that Taxi drivers one day would be able to work from home?

Waymo is doing the same. Mostly self-driving but when they get stuck a human at a help center takes the sticks. There are a lot of edge cases in the real world so it makes sense to just have the car programmed to be very conservative and let a human deal with it.

We already knew this was coming.

https://xkcd.com/1897/

The self-driving taxis and humanoid robots companies like Tesla are developing are just a thinly disguised way of getting around immigration law. We're a very long way away from having autonomous humanoid robots that can clean your house for you. But one remotely piloted by someone in Bangladesh wearing a haptic suit? If the tech was cheap enough, that sort of thing would be profitable.

It's effectively an extremely perverse and exploitive form of immigration. When we bring immigrants in, they typically take low-level jobs. But they also get opportunities to advance themselves further. Moreover, in the US at least, any children immigrants have on US soil automatically become US citizens. So yes, immigrants come in on the bottom of the social ladder, but they have an opportunity to climb.

Here though? This is a way of getting all the labor we want from immigrants but without offering them the usual deal in return. And even worse, they won't even be owed minimum wage.

How can I apply?

Tesla would not be the first robotaxi company to use this method. In fact, it’s an industry standard. It was previously reported that Cruise, the robotaxi company owned by General Motors, was employing remote human assistants to troubleshoot when its vehicles ran into trouble (the vehicles appear to have run into trouble every four to five miles). Google’s Waymo is also thought to employ the same practice, as does Zoox, the robotaxi firm owned by Amazon.

Ah, the old mechanical Turk trick. This time with chance of man slaughter.

When are people ever going to figure out that Tesla's "autopilot" is a freaking scam?

So does he now want people working from home or not?

He's very inconsistent.

This is gonna kill people from the input lag alone.

"How was your day, honey ?"

"I killed thirty people in a pile-up on Hwy74 remotely. I'll be a little late."

Just subreptitiously sell it as a video game, you won't even have to pay the drivers. I don't see what could go wrong with this plan.

I'm in, with generations of GTA experience

How about hiring people to drive the taxis.... Instead of hiring people to remotely drive the taxi... What exactly would be the difference??? Except actually having the driver in the vehicle is proven to work....

scammers pull the same shit over the world since the mechanical turk. at this point the joke's on us.

6 months from now it will be illegal to report crashes involving these cars.

That's like a normal taxi with extra steps!

ahahahahahaha!!

That's freaking hilarious. Muskie is an idjit.

Basically what the self driving food delivery robots do in Berkeley, then

They are pretty autonomous, but if they get stuck then someone in Colombia takes control

I thought the machine and Robot are gonna do everything lol

Indian tech supports strike again

Should be totally shut down until self diving is perfected. Shouldn't even be allowed the chance to lie about it.

Also they should get taxed into the ground. Like $5,000 Bill for signing a new customer up, and $60k every time the service is used. Daddy Warbucks can afford it and he be fixing the economy.

This is what's known as a pro gamer move.

Bonus points if you land a jump.

It is long past time we got over our child-like worship of billionaires.

On the one hand, this means they may be serious about actually trying to make this work. On the other hand, it'll almost certainly require a subscription to use the robotaxi in fully autonomous mode because that'll be an ongoing liability for Tesla.

I'd like to volunteer, just add a strong wheel

Anyone driving any kind of Tesla is a traitor to humanity. If people start spitting on you in public you know why.

I can't wait until state actors or rival corporations start hacking or getting jobs here.

is planning to hire a human team to remotely troubleshoot its robotaxi operations.

Ok so they're not remotely driving, as the title would have you believe.

So can I also start remote driving my car?

They should hire ex US Air Force drone pilots.

Y'all want to laugh but you lack the larger picture.

These folks will be on demand if a car gets stuck or lost. You'll have 1 person to 10 cabs and that number will go up as they collect data and iterate.

Your hated over this dude has really blinded many of you. You can be pissed but this is going to mostly replace human cab drivers in 15 years.

AI isn't going to immediately replace anyone. It will reduce demand over decades.

how many owners has the onion had now like all better known sites that were magazines they are all just skin suits that only use the name Recognition and nothing more.

i do love a car with no steering wheel what could go wrong.