Why Waymo went down in San Francisco

"Last weekend, a gnarly power outage in San Francisco took out a number of traffic lights, which, in turn, sent a number of self-driving Waymo robotaxis into a sort of fugue state. Instead of driving, some of the Waymos responded to these now-analog intersections by turning on their hazard lights, blocking traffic, and, well, not doing much of anything. There were multiple instances of Waymo cars clogging up roads, turning futuristic technology into glorified bollards."

"One of the big solutions to AI failures is the much-discussed human in the loop. The idea: At some point in an automated process - whether it be a job-application screening system or powerful self-driving car algorithms - humans have the opportunity to intervene and fix the hard stuff that artificial intelligence can't handle. AI doesn't understand every complex situation, the logic goes."

A San Francisco power outage disabled multiple traffic lights and caused several Waymo robotaxis to stop, activate hazard lights, and congest intersections. The city requested Waymo to suspend its service until the outage resolved. Power restoration allowed Waymo to resume operations the following Sunday. Remote assistance teams were intended to guide vehicles through confused intersections, but overloaded communication networks prevented some Waymo Driver software from connecting and receiving confirmations. The incident exposed a vulnerability in reliance on human-in-the-loop interventions that depend on network connectivity. Questions remain about contingency planning and system adjustments for similar municipal emergencies.

Read at Fast Company