Waymo employs drivers who are paid to sit in the driver's seat, either driving manually to collect training data or in autonomous mode to triage issues and send data to developers.

“Waymo's own documentation and job postings confirm this practice. The company employs "autonomous specialists" who ride in vehicles to monitor the technology and provide feedback. Job descriptions for roles like "Waymo Driver" and "Safety Driver" involve overseeing vehicle performance, intervening when necessary, and collecting data. Furthermore, Waymo states that to create maps for new areas, its team manually drives sensor-equipped vehicles to gather initial data. The Waymo Open Dataset also confirms it contains a mix of manually-driven and autonomously-driven data. Context: While Waymo does employ human drivers for testing, mapping, and monitoring, it also operates a fully autonomous public ride-hailing service in several cities where there is no human in the driver's seat. The use of human drivers is part of the development, expansion, and quality assurance process, not a feature of every vehicle in its commercial fleet.”