I just watched a short that said some (all) Waymo drivers are not autonomous, but remote controlled by humans in the Phillipines.

I'm sure it's a combination of both since the latency would mean immediate reactions are impossible, but the presenter raised an interesting point, and that was that the remote drivers are not licensed to drive in the states that Waymo operated in, which would make it illegal.

Waymo uses remote contractors to hint the Waymo driver when it can't figure out a path forward. They're not being remote piloted.

They are however, very cagy about how often this is necessary.

except for the overwhelming evidence from video we already have that waymos are reacting than a human in the driver’s seat would, much less someone 200ms away.