(original photo by Hoseung Han on Unsplash; edited by myself)

Dear friends,

In March, I wrote about Baidu’s Apollo Go experiments in Wuhan. The takeaway is that the so-called “self-driving” car is far from autonomous. At the end of April, the myth of autonomy hit a physical wall in Wuhan. Over 100 stalled vehicles reportedly paralyzed the city's traffic, leading to suspension of new permits.

Meanwhile in the US, Waymo made headlines in February when it was pushed to reveal more about its operations. Despite the “driverless” marketing, Waymo relies on a corps of backup responders in the Philippines.

Today, I want to shine a spotlight on the workers deliberately kept invisible and connect them with those who train the machine. As we start seeing them as essential parts of the assembly line, it becomes clear these workers hold a unique, untapped power over the fragile system.

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The Global Backseat Driver

The revelation came during a February 2026 Senate hearing, where Waymo’s Chief Safety Officer admitted that when their robotaxis encounter “edge cases”— scenarios the AI cannot resolve—they “phone a human friend” in centers located in two cities in the Philippines.

The resulting online debates were often clouded by xenophobia, revealing how little the public understands about the global tech infrastructure. Offshoring isn’t new; AI is just the latest shell.

These workers designated internally as ‘fleet response agents’ are the ones who tell the car how to navigate a confusing construction zone or while encountering a plastic bag.

While Waymo insists these agents do not “drive” the cars, they provide the cognitive judgement that the machine lacks. In the industry’s own infrastructure, these Filipino workers act as the human hardware required to bridge the gap between code and the chaotic reality of city streets.

But we must remember that these responders are only the last mile of a much longer labor supply chain.

The Chains of Data and Automation Workers

Companies like Waymo rely heavily on the global labor platforms like Scale AI and Remotasks for its data pipeline. This work is maintained by Filipino annotators who work 12-hour shifts labeling 3D LiDAR data points, training Waymo’s software to navigate real-world environments by identifying everything from pedestrians to roadside signage.

In cities like Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao, several thousands of data annotators perform the grueling foundational labor for companies like Waymo and Alphabet, its parent company. It is a multi-billion dollar industry built on invisible workers, from the US vantage, who often earn as little as $1.00 to $2.00 per hour, frequently bypassing local labor protections.

This invisibility is a theme explored in Glenn Diaz’s 2017 acclaimed novel, The Quiet Ones. In the crime thriller set against the backdrop of globalization, BPO workers navigate a world where they are physically in the Philippines but mentally and linguistically tethered to the US. They are “the quiet ones” because the global economy requires their silence to function. The moment the customer, or the robotaxi passenger, realizes a Filipino worker is steering the experience, the “magic” of Western innovation evaporates.

The frequent incidents of Baidu’s Apollo Go and Waymo vehicles getting stalled by something as trivial as a plastic bag—whether on the streets of Wuhan or at intersections in San Francisco—reveal not only the invisibility, but fragility in action. These breakdowns turn robotaxis into useless chunks of metal blocking public streets. The magic disappears.

From the Bottleneck to Openings

The reality of this ‘just-in-time’ workforce is undeniable: without the Global South, the driverless dream grinds to a halt. But where the industry sees a “risk,” we must recognize our leverage.

The very fact that Waymo’s fleet freezes without human input grants these workers a unique structural power. In theory, we could use such power to create a massive disruption.

For too long, tech giants have rendered Global South labor invisible. But invisibility allows for operation under the radar. Much like the protagonists in The Quiet Ones, a group of BPO workers have learned to exploit loopholes in the system, reversing the flow of extraction through their own subversive schemes.

For labor activists, the strategy is rooted in a clear paradox: the industry’s push for global expansion only intensifies its dependence on this specific, localized labor pool.

Our resistance must be as global as their supply chains. By connecting the dots from the data annotators to the fleet responders, we see that the machine does not move without us. Our struggle is to turn that dependence into power. They may own the cars, but we own the intelligence that makes them more than just expensive scrap metal.

Until next time,

Kriangsak (Kiang)

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