I was wondering why there wasn't a DOJ concern when Amazon Go did the same thing:
> Amazon Go: Early on, Amazon was clear that it was testing “Just Walk Out” tech — and it was known (at least in tech circles) that they had humans reviewing edge cases through video feeds. Some even joked about the “humans behind the AI.”
> Their core claim was that eventually the tech would get better, and the human backup was mostly for training data and quality assurance.
> They didn’t say, “this is 100% AI with zero human help right now.”
> Nate: Claimed it was already fully automated.
> Their CEO explicitly said the AI was doing all the work — “without human intervention” — and only used contractors for rare edge cases.
> According to the DOJ, the truth was: humans were doing everything, and AI was just a branding tool.
> Investors were told it was a software platform, when it was really a BPO in disguise.
There are some pretty major differences between what Waymo does and what a remote driving service (like the Vegas deployment by Vay mentioned upthread). Imagine that the car has a remote connection to a human while driving and the human misses that another vehicle is about to hit T-bone the taxi. Whose responsibility is it to stop?
With Waymo vehicles, it's the car's responsibility to sense the issue and brake, so we say that the car is driving and the human is a "remote assistant". With Vay, it's the human's responsibility because they are the driver.
This ends up having a lot of meaningful distinctions across the stack, even if it seems like a superficial distinction at first.
i continuously asked for an optimized database schema several times and all i keep getting is these damn shakespeare sonnets. starting to wonder if they are on to something...
I had no idea. There was an Amazon Go right in my workplace in 2019 (Brookfield Place) and I got lunches there almost daily. I loved it -- felt like magic, and it was crazy fast. I guess it was just an illusion (as all magic is).
There was something similar run by a German university near the hotel I was staying at. As an American I had to use the cashier like normal but they had signs about how the Amazon-Go like process the students were experimenting with would work, including picture and descriptions on how to help it not be confused.
Elon has also made a lot of claims over the years. Where is FSD or whatever they call it now? The whole solar roof tiles presentation was a lie at the time. P2P Starship travel is impossible but is being "sold" to the public as possible and many other things.
Exactly.
In this case it's pretty clear how Nate was defrauding investors with the claims.
Amazon Go made fraudulent claims, but not only had the legal savvy to hedge those claims, they didn't directly raise fund from investors based on those claims.
Sadly, I think we all know the answer - because laws don't apply to large corporations or wealthy, powerful individuals in the same way they apply to the rest of us.
> Amazon Go: Early on, Amazon was clear that it was testing “Just Walk Out” tech — and it was known (at least in tech circles) that they had humans reviewing edge cases through video feeds. Some even joked about the “humans behind the AI.” > Their core claim was that eventually the tech would get better, and the human backup was mostly for training data and quality assurance. > They didn’t say, “this is 100% AI with zero human help right now.”
> Nate: Claimed it was already fully automated. > Their CEO explicitly said the AI was doing all the work — “without human intervention” — and only used contractors for rare edge cases. > According to the DOJ, the truth was: humans were doing everything, and AI was just a branding tool. > Investors were told it was a software platform, when it was really a BPO in disguise.