• Curious Canid@lemmy.ca
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    5 days ago

    This would be more impressive if Waymos were fully self-driving. They aren’t. They depend on remote “navigators” to make many of their most critical decisions. Those “navigators” may or may not be directly controlling the car, but things do not work without them.

    When we have automated cars that do not actually rely on human being we will have something to talk about.

    It’s also worth noting that the human “navigators” are almost always poorly paid workers in third-world countries. The system will only scale if there are enough desperate poor people. Otherwise it quickly become too expensive.

    • Yoga@lemmy.ca
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      5 days ago

      The system will only scale if there are enough desperate poor people. Otherwise it quickly become too expensive.

      You can also get MMORPG players to do it for pennies per hour for in-game currency or membership. RuneScape players would gladly control 5 ‘autonomous’ cars if it meant that they could level up their farming level for free.

      The game is basically designed to be an incredibly time consuming skinner box that takes minimal skill and effort in order to maximize membership fees.

      • Gonzako@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        “Damn, I’m sorry my car killed your kids. The Carscape person didn’t get their drop”

        • Yoga@lemmy.ca
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          5 days ago

          The human operators are there for when the AI gets softlocked in a situation where it doesn’t know what to do and just sits there, not for regular driving.

      • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Packaging the job as a video game side quest is genius. Make so the gamer has to do several simulated runs before they connect to an actual car, and give in-game expensive consequences for messing it up

        • Yoga@lemmy.ca
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          5 days ago

          It doesn’t even need to be a side quest, just a second screen activity lol

          They’ll do it for pennies an hour for 12 hours a day.

    • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Has anyone found the places where the navigators work to see how it goes? Has a navigator shared their experience on the web somewhere?

      I am very curious as to what they are asked to do and for how many cars And for how much money