Uber's Platform Strategy for Autonomous Vehicles and AI Efficiency

Key Quotes

"The truth is almost everything Uber does is powered by AI. I've known Dara for years in fact I was the first one to tell him he got the CEO job at Uber and since then he's steered the company through tough times and into profitability and now he's leading the charge as they move aggressively into autonomous vehicles."

Kara Swisher introduces Dara Khosrowshahi and highlights Uber's extensive use of artificial intelligence across its operations, emphasizing that AI is fundamental to the company's business model and its aggressive push into autonomous vehicles. This sets the stage for a discussion about how AI is applied in practical, real-world scenarios beyond typical tech company applications.

"AI has been part of our genetics for a very very long time now AI is a big word so in the time it was like deep learning or machine learning but you're right which is most of the aspects of how Uber touch you in terms of the price that you get presented with the price that we pay drivers whom we match you up with the routing that you take even the algorithms that recognize your driver's license to make sure that you are the right person all of that has been driven by AI and so we have been an AI applied AI company I guess I guess you call us like one of the cool things about Uber that I love is we're a technology company but we're a technology company that operates in the real world we don't just like an Amazon yeah yeah we're not just digital in scope and so the application of that AI is it's a physical manifestation of getting a ride or getting your deliveries etc but we have long been driven by AI in all things pricing matching etc."

Dara Khosrowshahi explains that AI is deeply integrated into Uber's core functions, from pricing and driver matching to route optimization and identity verification, defining Uber as an "applied AI company" that operates in the physical world. He contrasts this with purely digital companies, underscoring that Uber's AI applications have tangible, real-world manifestations like rides and deliveries.

"The value creation not in the space age stuff but in the very practical stuff of hey if you if you are shopping with us and you choose oat milk what's the next thing that we show you um these larger models are enormously more effective than the last generation of models and they are translating into you know hundreds of millions of dollars of benefit to us and so the spend for us in terms of AI has been well worth it and then some right but you're riding on their rails for the most part right now which is like you and apple there's other companies that are benefiting from the massive spending but not necessarily spending we are not -- building the picks and shovels but we're riding on top of that spend absolutely and and the impact that we see on our business is very very positive."

Dara Khosrowshahi highlights the significant, practical value derived from AI, particularly larger models, in improving customer experiences like personalized product recommendations. He notes that this AI investment yields hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits, making the spend worthwhile, while also acknowledging that Uber, like Apple, benefits from the broader industry's infrastructure spending on AI without necessarily building the foundational hardware.

"So I'd say honestly right now -- the area where I would say it's got the most impact is actually our developer productivity so -- 80 90 of our developers and and you know they are by far the most expensive talent that we have in house -- they are using -- AI -- developer tools -- like cursor and and many others but it's not just the developers and coding but it's checking the code code documentation on call you know we we have hundreds of engineers that are on call and you know we operate in 70 countries 15,000 cities something is going wrong somewhere all the time and so you need engineers to be on call all the time to fix the issues and essentially now we have AI agents that are on call and if there's something wrong whereas previously the engineer had spent hours and hours you know you got these calls together 20 engineers what's going on where is it going on these AI agents are constantly essentially looking at all of our systems and then they come to our engineers with a hypothesis something went down here pricing -- error here's a hypothesis and then the human can look over the shoulder of the of the AI agent."

Dara Khosrowshahi identifies developer productivity as the area where AI is currently having the most significant impact at Uber, explaining that AI tools are assisting developers with coding, documentation, and on-call support. He describes how AI agents now monitor systems and present hypotheses to human engineers for issues that previously required extensive manual investigation by large teams, thereby increasing efficiency.

"The opportunity is safety. I do think the industry overall understands that the cost of a mistake here is enormous and the AI driver will be safer than a human driver they don't get distracted they don't text they don't get tired and the AI algorithm is getting better all the time you know the U and I are driving isn't going to continuously get better the AI drivers are going to get better they have cameras lidar everything so one is this is going to be a safer method of transportation over over a long period of time that that's a period -- right now the business has to scale up so the manufacturing of these cars is in there at scale the cars are super expensive eventually -- it will also be a cheaper form of transportation now the eventually is 10 to 15 years from now."

Dara Khosrowshahi asserts that safety is the primary opportunity presented by autonomous vehicles (AVs), arguing that AI drivers will inherently be safer than humans because they do not get distracted or tired and their capabilities continuously improve. He acknowledges that AVs are currently expensive and require scaling up manufacturing, but predicts they will become a cheaper form of transportation within 10 to 15 years.

"I think the responsibility -- that I see is for us to be truthful about the direction that we're going in and then to to act I would say in a in a human manner the example and it's a small example cara but and it's kind of obvious which is in Austin you know the about I'll call it 20 of our drivers turn over naturally okay so like they they go do something else -- in Austin when we know that we're introducing a bunch of Waymo drivers we slow down our human driver recruitment because we want the drivers who are driving in Austin to still make money we don't want to kind of flood the market with drivers with human drivers and AV drivers but you're not hiring more people we're not hiring more people so I do think that there will be a gradual transition into more and more AVs being a part of our service our service is growing 20 plus percent so I think 10 years from now we're going to have more drivers on Uber than we do today even though a significant percentage of our rides are going to be AV rides so I I just think we have to handle it in a humane way."

Dara Khosrowshahi