Waymo just revealed a crucial statistic for scaling its technology

At any moment, just 70 people oversee Waymo’s 3,000-vehicle fleet.

This post originally appeared in Understanding AI.

“Waymo’s new disclosure should finally put to rest lingering suspicions that Waymo’s vehicles are not truly self-driving.”

Software on board driverless Waymo vehicles makes realtime driving decisions. But the vehicles have the ability to “phone home” and get assistance from humans if they encounter situations they don’t understand.

How often does this happen? Until this week, Waymo kept numbers like this confidential. But on Tuesday, Waymo provided an important clue, revealing that “at any given time, there are approximately 70 Remote Assistance agents on duty worldwide.”

That’s a surprisingly small number given that Waymo has more than 3,000 vehicles in its fleet. And it has big implications for Waymo’s commercial viability.

We can compare Waymo to Cruise, the GM subsidiary that was seen as Waymo’s leading competitor until it was forced to shut down in the wake of a serious 2023 crash.