Uber: AI Takes Hold Internally, Balancing Gains and Restrictions

At Uber, tools like Genie, Glean, Gemini, and Claude are becoming part of the daily routine for teams, from support to advertising. Former employees describe time savings and copy-pasting of responses, but also cautionary guidelines. The management defends a managerial restructuring, mentions "tailwinds" of productivity, and admits to reduced credits for certain AI services.

Tightened AI Budget and "Tailwinds" of Productivity, According to Uber

Uber executives have indicated that they have already spent their budget for Claude and are not seeing productivity gains proportional to the amounts invested in AI tools. According to an employee, the company began in the first half of this year to reduce or cut credits for services like Claude. Last week, Dara Khosrowshahi reiterated justifications already presented in a conference, claiming to see, with the restructuring, "real tailwinds" in terms of productivity, through AI or through more general productivity technologies.

Chatbots and In-House Co-Pilots to Assist Teams and Users

Uber is deploying a chatbot named Genie across numerous Slack channels, presented by the company as providing quick responses along with citations from internal documentation. According to one account, the agent answers employee questions and takes on advice previously given by managers, with AI responding most of the time. On the support side, an employee explains using Glean, trained on internal documents, to handle help requests from drivers and passengers. According to him, these tools are designed to help find information, but responses are sometimes copied and pasted directly into chats, especially when the internal knowledge base is not functioning.

Encouragement to Use AI and Warnings Against ChatGPT

A former advertising employee claims that managers encouraged the use of Gemini and ChatGPT to prepare for client meetings, a practice that, according to him, was part of daily life. Other accounts mention managerial warnings against this type of usage, with Kori X explicitly citing the directive "Do not use ChatGPT to do your work." Kori X believes that some managers question the value of work if it relies on ChatGPT. Another former employee states that they did not feel pressured to adopt AI and describes a measured approach, with dedicated office hours, explanations of capabilities and limitations, and restrictions on AI-generated images in external communications. More broadly, employees report a continuous deployment of AI in multiple applications, with some claiming to have entrusted substantial portions of their tasks to AI, even reducing the time required to complete them to one-fifth.

Reorganization and Job Cuts Without Mention of AI

Earlier this month, Uber cut approximately 3,300 positions. Dara Khosrowshahi explained the desire to reduce "management levels" and decrease "micro-teams" where managers had only one or two direct reports, without mentioning AI in the announcement memo. The company reaffirmed its focus on managerial layers and did not cite AI as a motivation. However, six former collaborators say that AI has grown in importance in their tasks in recent months, including responses to support and questions posed on Slack. Uber declined to comment. Some employees suggest that AI may be part of the reasons for the layoffs, while others simply describe a growing presence of these tools in daily operations.