Someone posted that Musk/Tesla had been discussing the need for teleoperation and at first I read it as "teleport." Masterful gambit, sir, $TSLA +378% as your fanboys believe you have invented the transporter.
But, no, it was teleoperation. We don't know how much remote intervention is used in existing automated taxis. Before they stopped operating, it was revealed that Cruise required it *a lot*. I don't know what Waymo is doing. In theory they are transparent, but the way they write this stuff up seems to have had the very heavy hand of lawyer involved.
Something journalists almost always get wrong about teleoperation is that it really can't help with safety. They're there to unstick a confused vehicle, not to prevent one from crashing at 35MPH.
Response lags, including cellular lags, means operators can't actually pilot the cars effectively. They can give them a nudge.
To back up the AI driving the vehicles, Tesla has also hired human staff to monitor and assist if they get into jams, taking full control if necessary. “As we iterate on the AI that powers them, we need the ability to access and control them remotely,” the company said in a posting for one such job. Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, the leader in robotaxi tech, also uses remote operators to assist the vehicles by providing suggested solutions to tricky situations, but those people don’t actually drive them. Lag and latency in cellular networks make remote operations unsafe.
Safety is a real concern, especially with a company run by Elon, but as I've said all along, if they basically "work" then safety is less of a concern then people think, though that involves cars being cautious and annoying as hell to other drivers.