AI isn’t just dispatching rides and driving cars for Uber, it’s also imitating CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
Khosrowshahi said on an episode of the podcast “The Diary of a CEO” hosted by Stephen Bartlett that some Uber employees have created an AI version of their company’s CEO.
“One of my team members told me that several teams have built ‘Dara AI,'” Khosrowshahi said. “They basically present to Dara AI in preparation for presenting to me.”
AI clones can help employees change slides and other parts of presentations, he said. “They are using Dara AI to coordinate their preparations,” Khosrowshahi said.
It’s unclear how widespread the CEO Bot’s use is within Uber’s offices, but it’s the latest example of how AI is being leveraged in new ways to prepare employees for high-pressure moments at work.
Additionally, as its use in large enterprises expands, questions arise about how far up the organizational chart can AI go? Even some CEOs like Google’s Sundar Pichai have said that AI could eventually replace them.
“Are you worried that they’ll show Dara AI to the board?” Bartlett asked on the podcast, eliciting laughter from both men.
While AI models can process large amounts of data, processing and making choices based on new information remains difficult, something executives like him have to do, Khosrowshahi said.
“Once the model can learn in real time, at that point I start thinking, well, we’re all replaceable,” he says.
Uber relies on AI for much of its business, including supporting the operations of its core ride-hailing business. We’re also expanding into new use cases, including an AI solutions division that pays independent contractors to train AI for clients.
For average Uber employees, AI could create more jobs. For example, about 30% of Uber’s programmers are AI “power users,” Khosrowshahi said.
If AI makes each of Uber’s engineers 25% more efficient, the CEO said, “we want to go faster, so we want to hire more engineers.”
AI could also limit numbers, he added.
“We may not decide to increase the number of people in the engineering department,” Khosrowshahi said. “At that point, instead of adding engineers, you need to add agents and buy more GPUs from Nvidia.”
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