It's not a first without the butter:

> San Francisco-based self-driving truck startup Embark Trucks, which last year completed a five-day, 2,400-mile cross-country trip. But that truck carried no freight.

Still, you'd think they'd ship something in abundant supply in California and short supply in Pennsylvania. Optimism, maybe.

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 cents per ton by cutting out the trucker.

I have trouble believing you actually think that. I suspect you are just trying to defend a comment that's indefensibly vapid. But, if you genuinely believe there's no positive value in freight and that making it more efficient is an unworthy goal, then I don't think we'll come eye to eye on anything tonight.

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 exploited if they are not driving long haul truck routes?

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.

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.

Yeah, and once dinosaurs roamed the earth. It’s easy to make generalizations about the merits of moving on when you aren’t being left behind.

Yes. This is true..what you say. But the world keeps turning. C’est la vie etc.

> I also don’t see how migrant workers are being exploited? How is anyone exploited if they are not driving long haul truck routes?

Because you are making it cheaper to transport from California agribusinesses who are known for violating labor laws to Pennsylvania who is known for enforcing labor laws.

This is in opposition to local manufacturing which becomes more economically feasible the more transport costs.

Can you share your source for the above statements re ca agribusinesses violating labor laws etc. Thanks.

Okay, I'll play along even though the most cursory Google search has tons of hits:

"Verify: Are half of California farmworkers undocumented?" https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/verify/verify-are-h...

Deporting illegal workers is causing farm workers to finally be above minimum wage: "Wages rise on California farms. Americans still don’t want the job" https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/

I chose those two articles because they are quite a bit more "pro-immigration" than others and most likely to blunt the knee-jerk "Yer a raciiiiist!" idiots.

The real problem is that rather than deporting all these people we should be hitting the agribusinesses with gigantic fines and jail time for exploiting them in the first place. If some CEOs wound up in jail for employing undocumented workers and not paying minimum wage instead of just getting a slap on the wrist, this problem would self-correct.

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.

Your last sentence is something I never thought I'd read. There is a motivational poster in there somewhere.

Or maybe a "demotivational" one.

"Citizenship" A celebration of all the moments our children will remember as the beginning of the end, thanks to our desire to change the world for the butter.

The only one that sounds indefensibly vapid, is you. I thought they were thoughtful comments that would be valued in a more open-minded, and frankly more interesting venue. Certainly not worthy of being flagged. Not much latitude in thought at this site.

It certainly is a feat to be celebrated as a technologist.

As a citizen, I wonder if it’s a moment our children will celebrate or remember as the beginning of an end.

To be honest that's not entirely obvious from the title. I was left wondering why butter was worth mentioning if the point was self-driving.

It’s a refrigerated good. No human is safely driving from California to Pennsylvania in 3 days. If you need something fresh, this is basically telling supermarkets and distributors that robots can get it to you faster.

Refrigerated cargo has a not insignificant carbon foot print. If self driving trucks can deliver it sooner/faster, then it’s a good thing.

They mention it because there's a longer distance self driving semi-truck record, but it wasn't hauling anything.

I imagine the point is that it hauled a refrigerated fragile load, and it arrived unscathed.

No single driver can make that time, but a two person team can make coast to coast in 3days in decent weather. The issue with all these autonomous vehicles is that this country regularly has some nasty weather.

I hope that people will do more than read the title before posting low-effort dismissals.