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Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

santacruzsentinel.com

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Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#51

Post by Tempest1981 »

sdan wrote: post #42

Interesting thing is that their Silicon Valley office is next to a strip mall and is more of an office space than an industrial one. I live near there and so far haven't seen any of their branded trucks or anything of their brand really relative to other self driving startups like Apple roaming around with their mattress-like hardware system. So I'm guessing most development work is happening in China, just like seve…

Their webpage shows 15 engineering job openings in Silicon Valley: https://plus.ai/join/

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#52

Post by repiret »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #28
melling wrote: post #19

“the truck drove mostly autonomously.” That last 10% is going to be a lot of work. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule

I'll take a 90% efficiency gain any day. If they can drive I-70 from SF to NYC with no human, or the 10 from Florida to California, that seems like a win, even if the person has to drive in the city. Warehousing will just get shifted around to work with where the trucks can safely drive.

That would be quite the feat given that I70 goes to neither of those states.

I80 goes SF to NJ, but no single interstate will take you from SF to NYC proper.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#53

Post by nwallin »

deeblering4 wrote: post #37
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn’t this a great accomplishment? People don’t have to be long haul truck drivers or be alert the whole time.. Even if it entirely eliminates human beings, it means the person who’d be driving the truck will be able to do better paying or other fulfilling tasks. Who knows...study or become an artist or spend more time with children etc. I also don’t see how migrant workers are being exploited? How is anyone expl…

I take it you are not a trucker who is providing for a family. Think about not only losing your job but losing your entire industry.

A bar friend of mine is currently a truck driver. He's going to school to learn to be a network engineer.

Retraining is a really important part of our modern reality. The idea that we can simply turn off the tap of advancing technology so that the hardest working, lowest paid workers can continue to toil for peanuts is super shitty. There are some incredibly intelligent people who stumbled in their development who really deserve a second chance at jobs that aren't ass.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#54

Post by crtlaltdel »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #51
sdan wrote: post #42

Interesting thing is that their Silicon Valley office is next to a strip mall and is more of an office space than an industrial one. I live near there and so far haven't seen any of their branded trucks or anything of their brand really relative to other self driving startups like Apple roaming around with their mattress-like hardware system. So I'm guessing most development work is happening in China, just like seve…

Their webpage shows 15 engineering job openings in Silicon Valley: https://plus.ai/join/

imo the open req for an auto tech is a tell that they either have a low key shop or are building a shop out in sv

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#55

Post by joe_the_user »

nwallin wrote: post #44
joe_the_user wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take a 90% efficiency gain any day. If you need a safety driver 100% of the time, the net gain in efficiency is 0%. Edit: There's no comment in the article about there being period with no safety driver.

If it's one safety driver monitoring 4 vehicles it's still a win.

But that isn't what the article talked about either (A European company did do a run like that a while though).

It did talk about "level 4 autonomy" based on a single drive with no disengagements (they mentioned they'd made a lot of drives but didn't mention their disengagement rate overall), doesn't sound like "achieving level 4" autonomy either-either.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#56

Post by Spooky23 »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #34
Spooky23 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the reality of modern agriculture. All of this innovation and advanced tech just squeezing a few pennies out of butter. Check out this gentleman, a 4th generation onion farmer in upstate NY who cannot sell his onions at any price. Like many farmers in the northeast, he’ll be bankrupt in a few months. https://twitter.com/ChrisPawelski/status/1173339453332643840... Produce buyers use cartel tactics to suppress p…

Curious.. Do you not see any other upsides except saving a ‘few pennies out of butter’? Better working conditions..less accidents..data collection. Fast delivery..efficiency?

Not really. Labor is a constraint that has kept truly dominant players from taking over the industry.

Without that, trucks are no different than cable companies, airlines, or other capital intensive businesses. They’ll consolidate over time into oligopoly. Whatever efficiency gains appear will be eaten up by the lack of market forces.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#57

Post by aiphex »

throwaway1931 wrote: post #31
seriesf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the butter is the important thing in this article. The self-driving revolution isn't going to enable beautiful and wondrous accomplishments. Instead, it's going to enable international megaconglomerates to more cheaply exploit the desperately poor migrant workforces of far-away places. That's all you're going to get out if it: butter at the same price, but from Tulare County and the butter company saves ten…

When my family immigrated to this country I was told I was here to take "their jobs". I started by taking an engineering job but I'm only one person that's not good enough, so I automated everyone around me out of a job... but I could do better. Make AI that does people's jobs and I the immigrant can take a lot more people's jobs.

You're a bitter guy or what? I'm sorry you were treated that way, but you know there are good people out there.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#58

Post by crtlaltdel »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #46
deeblering4 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you are not a trucker who is providing for a family. Think about not only losing your job but losing your entire industry.

Are you a trucker? Once upon a time, horse drawn carriages transported people and there were stables and groomsmen and carriage drivers and those who provided food and board for the horses. That entire industry and those jobs disappeared when the motor cars came along. They found other jobs. We moved on.

^ this is a great comment, and speaks to the reality. as cars came to prominence a whole host of supporting industry developed, creating jobs. it seems like some of those jobs required more technical training than the jobs they replaced.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#59

Post by Tempest1981 »

For better or worse, millions of truck drivers are going to be displaced. Just like the way robots replaced manufacturing jobs.

The best plan is to prepare, like Yang and others are saying: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/trucking-czar/

So we can soften the blow.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#60

Post by catalogia »

peterwwillis wrote: post #32

They were delivering butter... to Pennsylvania? TIL: California is the nation's leading milk producer, New York is fourth, Pennsylvania is 7th.

Yeah that doesn't make much sense to me. Local brands of butter made with local dairy are popular in Pennsylvania. It's alarming to think how environmentally inefficient shipping butter two thousand miles must be.
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