Waymo admits its robotaxis call ‘response agents’ in Philippines for help
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The admission comes barely two weeks after a Waymo robotaxi struck a child – who had minor injuries – in California.
PHOTO: AFP
For years, the promise of autonomous vehicles has been that computers, not people, would soon be doing the driving.
Recently, US lawmakers learnt that when those computers hesitate, they may be asking for advice from a human being sitting half a world away – in the Philippines.
During a Senate hearing on Feb 4 on the safety of self-driving cars, an executive at Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle company, confirmed that some of the human assistance supporting its driverless fleet is provided by Filipinos.
The revelation offered a reminder that even the most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems often rely on human judgment, and that in the technology industry, that judgment is frequently outsourced.
The disclosure came as Dr Mauricio Pena, Waymo’s chief safety officer, testified before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, alongside representatives from Tesla and the autonomous vehicle industry.
Waymo currently operates autonomous ride-hailing services in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and has announced plans to expand to other cities such as Boston, Dallas and Washington, DC as well as London.
As at the latest available data in early 2026, Waymo’s fleet of autonomous vehicles, mostly robotaxis, is estimated at about 2,500.
During the hearing, Senator Edward Markey disclosed that when an autonomous vehicle faces a scenario it cannot resolve on its own, the “Waymo phones a human friend for help”.
He described what he characterised as a largely opaque system of “remote assistance operators” who play a role in vehicle safety but remain invisible to the public.
Dr Pena said those workers do not take control of the vehicles, emphasising that Waymo’s system retains responsibility for all driving decisions.
“They provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles,” he added. “Waymo is always in charge of the dynamic driving task.”
Pressed further by Mr Markey on where those human assistants are located, Dr Pena said some were in the United States and others abroad, later specifying that the overseas workers were in the Philippines.
He added that he did not have precise figures on their distribution.
The acknowledgment drew immediate concern from Mr Markey, who framed the issue as one of safety, security and labour.
“Having people overseas influencing American vehicles is a safety issue,” he said, citing the potential for delayed information, unfamiliarity with US road conditions, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
The admission comes barely two weeks after a Waymo robotaxi struck a child
Responding to that incident, the National Transportation Safety Board and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have begun multiple investigations into several incidents in which Waymo vehicles drove past school buses while students were getting on or off.
‘Fleet response agents’
Mr Markey also criticised Waymo and similar companies for seeking to automate driving jobs while relying on lower-paid labour abroad to support their systems.
A Waymo spokesman told People magazine that the use of Filipino workers is part of the company’s effort to scale its operations globally.
The workers, referred to internally as “fleet response agents”, are required to hold passenger vehicle or van licences and undergo regular driving history checks.
These “agents” provide contextual information, such as road conditions or unusual obstacles, when the vehicle requests assistance, but do not control steering, acceleration or braking.
The spokesman declined to say how many of such agents work in the Philippines or how that number compares with that in the US.
Waymo’s reliance on Filipino labour places it squarely within a long-established pattern in the technology industry.
For decades, American tech companies have turned to the Philippines for outsourced work, drawn by a large, English-speaking workforce and a business process outsourcing sector that employs more than a million people.
Filipino workers already moderate social media content, label data for AI systems, handle customer support for major platforms, and perform back-office tasks essential to the functioning of digital services used daily in the US.
In recent years, as AI systems have grown more sophisticated, Filipino workers have increasingly been employed as behind-the-scenes “human-in-the-loop” contributors, correcting errors, resolving edge cases and supplying judgment where algorithms fall short.
