Uber engineers built an AI version of their boss

Consumers probably think of Uber as a ride-hailing and food delivery company. But in the eyes of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber is really just a giant code base with engineers that are “literally the builders of the company.” In fact, Uber’s engineers have gone so far as to replace Khosrowshahi with a chatbot that they’ll ask questions in preparation of meetings with the top brass.

That’s according to an interview Khosrowshahi gave this week on Steven Bartlett’s podcast, The Diary of a CEO.

“One of my team members told me that some teams have built a Dara AI, you know, so that they basically make the presentation to the Dara AI as a prep for making a presentation to me,” Khosrowshahi said on the podcast. “Because you can imagine, like, you know, by the time something comes to me, there’s been a prep and a meeting of the slide deck has been beautifully honed. So they have Dara AI to tune their prep.”

Business Insider earlier reported this detail.

About 90% of Uber’s software engineers are using AI in their work, Khosrowshahi said, while about 30% are “power users” of AI tools, completely rethinking the architecture of the company.

“They are manufacturing the bricks that go into the system, and they’re architects who are kind of thinking about what the system should look like,” he said.

Khosrowshahi added: “It really is changing their productivity in a way that I’ve never, ever seen before.”