• Jaysyn@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    That more than likely aren’t licensed to drive on US roads.

    Waymo has been committing thousands of crimes per day.

  • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    For those not in the know: this has been a thing for a while, is available to anyone (at least on AWS), and I have very deeply mixed feelings about it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk

    Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing website with which businesses can hire remotely located “crowdworkers” to perform discrete on-demand tasks that computers are currently unable to do as economically. It is operated under Amazon Web Services, and is owned by Amazon.[1] Employers, known as requesters, post jobs known as Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs), such as identifying specific content in an image or video, writing product descriptions, or answering survey questions. Workers, colloquially known as Turkers or crowdworkers, browse among existing jobs and complete them in exchange for a fee set by the requester. To place jobs, requesters use an open application programming interface (API), or the more limited MTurk Requester site.[2] As of April 2019, requesters could register from 49 approved countries.[3] It is named after the Mechanical Turk, a chess machine.[4]

    • Ajen@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      The difference here is that several companies have used offshore human labor for products they claim are powered by AI. Mechanical Turk doesn’t claim to be AI.

  • thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    If a company simply said that their cars are driven remotely by a real person, I think people would be happier with the technology and we’d see such car technology really take-off.

    Imagine getting board of driving and paying somebody $20 in another country to drive for a 2 hours for you, while you texted or something

    How long before all trucks in the N.America are driven remotely by cheaper labor, that can easily hand off to another driven. The truck would be able to drive virtually endlessly between coasts.

    • rumba@lemmy.zip
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      7 days ago

      That’s not quite how they’re doing it, though. That BMW vallet image on the site is misleading. I watched some documentary recently where they talked about this.

      They’re intervening when the shitty AI can’t figure something out, which is a lot. But they’re not driving it remotely; the latency would be dangerous. They’re telling the automation to back up and go around or to pull up to a certain point.

      You still have to pay for all the lidar sensors and computers on the car. You’re just paying the cheap labor to change the instructions when the ai can’t complete the assignment as it currently estimates it.

    • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      You’re seriously suggesting that we should trust powered deathtraps running at highway speeds to people who are completely disconnected from the actual risks of driving, and whose connection could suddenly cut out? That sounds like something that Phillip K. Dick would write about, and he would not be kind.

      • thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Lot’s of people can’t be truck drivers because they can’t be away from their families; having young children, elderly parents. We can transform this into a work-from-home job.

    • MunkyNutts@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      With this headline it seems as if this may have been their plan all along. Outsource labor to a poorer nation, who work for pennies on the dollar compared to their local counterpart with hopes that eventually they get autonomous driving to a flawless state, and then put both out of a job. Profit!

      • thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        I think that there would be a fortune to make if a company just says they are paying workers to remotely drive cars. They’d be able to get proper regulations in place, and then also take over the entire trucking market. It would still probably cost less than trying to develop the AI.

  • redwattlebird @lemmings.world
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    7 days ago

    Basically third partying cost of labour to a country where worker protections differ (although are there any worker protections in the US at all?).

  • renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net
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    7 days ago

    So many of these “revolutionary” automation technologies end up being mechanical Turks. I guess “fake it till you make it” is considered a viable business model in the tech industry.

    • verdi@tarte.nuage-libre.fr
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      7 days ago

      *US tech industry.

      It’s the ultimate evidence the US has reverted to feudalism when economic power is completely detached from intelligence.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      This is just a click bait fear mongering article in the first place. Pre 2025 a Waymo would travel on average 17,000 miles per unusual situation and it would request input for the specific scenario. Even the video in the article doesn’t show someone remotely “driving” the car.

      Basically the article could be written as “Waymos have a fallback to request help from a human if they run into an unusual situation.”.

      They check the camera footage and give it advice essentially

    • MBech@feddit.dk
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      7 days ago

      It didn’t work for Elisabeth Holmes, why does it work for these pricks?

      • Formfiller@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        They’re men in the privileged pedofile class they can commit as many crimes as they want and nothing will ever happen to them

      • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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        7 days ago

        Hyperloop, Tesla Semi, traffic tunnels, Tesla roadster, Tesla Solar roof tiles…Tesla butler robots…

    • hector@lemmy.today
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      7 days ago

      Worked for the president, musk, et al, everyone is copying them all the way down. If you call them out they will file a 10 billion dollar lawsuit against you and drag you into some court system you don’t even live near.

  • anticonnor@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    This article doesn’t really say anything new or alarming. Already knew that remote humans could take control of the vehicle if the AI got stuck. There’s no data here describing how often humans are intervening, so the only thing this is trying to get you angry about is the fact Waymo is using more foreign workers than previously thought.

    Mauricio Peña, recently noted that when the company’s robotaxis encounter unusual situations, they may switch control to the remote drivers. While some of the contractors work in the US, many operate from other countries, such as the Philippines.

    • rumba@lemmy.zip
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      7 days ago

      There was a video of it somewhere months ago. They’re not taking the wheel; they’re just telling the automation to stop what it’s doing and give it alternate commands it can actually execute. They showed a gridlock of waymo, they went back to a car that could actually get out of the situation, told it to go park, then told the ones in front of it to back up until the locked car could get out.

      Seems like something an autonomous swarm should already be able to do.

    • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Already knew that remote humans could take control of the vehicle if the AI got stuck

      i mean, the only thing i’m seeing that seems like i should be argle bargling about is the potential frequency of takeovers and the drivers licensing of the operators. i would want a human taking over from the ML car if it is confused, the ML system i had to work with at my job needed constant handholding.

  • rafoix@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    Executives at way should be personally charged with driving without a license and their business license should be revoked for violating traffic laws. Every day should be a new misdemeanor charge which should bump it up to a felony charge in CA.

    • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      If companies want to be treated like persons (thanks SCOTUS!) then after a few tickets every car should lose its license and the whole fleet is grounded.

    • jacksilver@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I never even thought about the fact we have no licensed people driving these cars. How is that legal?

  • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
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    7 days ago

    This makes Uber drivers in the US that actually have to get into a car and deal with app and humans and burn gas and oil compete with someone sitting in a chair in the Philippines.