[Zigurd]

All major AV deployments have human backup. Waymo published how their's works in broad terms: If a situation requires intervention, the human backup is presented with a choice among possible actions.

What remote monitors imply depends: In China, you might be focusing on collecting data from rides that may need a lot of remote monitoring. Or, faking it until you make it. If you are Google and you like headcount minimalism, it shows you have confidence you can spend $5B on expanding AV service without blowing out you headcount. Tesla also likes to keep headcount low. So they think they can catch up to Waymo very quickly.