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This argument is funny because you could have said the same thing 4 years ago: Uber still picks you up just as it did years before that, so what did all those millions spent on developer salaries get them?

Uber’s business is relentlessly confusing for people who think it’s a simple app to send an alert to a nearby driver to pick you up.

Uber operates at a scale where there are no trivial problems because even small changes can impact hundred of thousands of customers. They can also justify spending time and money on new features that only 0.1% of customers might use because 0.1% of their customers is a very large number.

by thewebguyd3 hours ago|

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Uber also has to maintain thousands of region specific rules and features to be able to operate globally, and they do it all in the same app instead of having specific regional versions (which would be a terrible user experience for frequent travelers). That alone is a ton of work the end user will never see but is core to their operation.

by kshri242 hours ago|

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This is not just me saying it. The Uber president himself says it in the article.

> so what did all those millions spent on developer salaries get them?

There was no doubt about what these developer salaries got them. It was to keep Uber stable and running in thousands of jurisdictions with varying rules/regulations.

The idea of using AI was (I hope) not just to replace developers for this purpose but to also ship features/products beyond what was already being offered. It has however not panned out as these CEOs/execs thought it would.

> They can also justify spending time and money on new features that only 0.1% of customers might use because 0.1% of their customers is a very large number.

And what are those features exactly? Because even the President of Uber doesn't seem to know:

"“That link is not there yet, right? I think maybe implicitly there is more that is getting shipped, but it’s very hard to draw a line between one of those stats and, ‘Okay, now we’re actually producing 25 percent more useful consumer features,’” said Macdonald."

The budget allocated to AI for the year has been wiped out in 4 months.

by fancyfredbot5 hours ago|

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Apparently:

* In App Hotel bookings in partnership with Expedia.

* Travel Mode with suggestions on where to eat and visit when travelling.

* Eats for the way - your driver picks up a takeaway for you to eat while they drive you to your destination.

* Voice bookings using AI and speech to text.

How did we ever live without them!

by burkaman4 hours ago|

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> Eats for the way - your driver picks up a takeaway for you to eat while they drive you to your destination.

This seems like the kind of terrible idea that an LLM might have come up with. I'm pretty sure most drivers do not want people eating (especially a whole meal) in their car, and I can't imagine a lot of instances where you're calling an Uber and don't have time to get yourself food, but don't mind waiting an extra 10 minutes for the driver to detour, find parking, and wait for your food.

by jmuguy4 hours ago|

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Not to mention what anyone who's worked in an office with a shared kitchen can tell you - the smell getting into a car where an indeterminate amount of people have eaten different meals. Like climbing into a food court dumpster.

by lukeschlather3 hours ago|

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> I can't imagine a lot of instances where you're calling an Uber and don't have time to get yourself food

Recently I got a car to take me to the train station and picked up food on the way. Seems pretty common to me. Of course, I didn't need or want it charged as a premium feature in the app.

by newaccountman22 hours ago|

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I have never heard of someone doing that tbh, this is the first time.

by generalpf2 hours ago|

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You can get any Uber driver to do it for you if you offer to buy them food too and do it off the books.

by newaccountman24 hours ago|

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Holy fuck, aside from the voice bookings, that's some useless shit to spend money building as far as both tokens and salaries go.

Are they profitable yet lol

by ryandrake4 hours ago|

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This seems like the doom of all tech companies that hit a single kernel of a good idea, hire a big development team to build it, and then, once it's running well and making money, leadership looks around and sees this big body of developers, product managers, project managers, QA, and management tree, looking around for something else to do. Then, instead of saying, "Let's find the next big thing to do," they say, "Cram dozens more things into the thing that already works. Anything you can think of, spin up a team of 10 to bolt it onto the main product. Move things around to make everything fit. Run experiments on users to see if this new crap moves the metrics. A/B test to see what we should keep and what we should silently remove next update. Attach this other company's product that we just bought."

In a few years, what do you end up with? The modern version of every single fucking app we use today.

by smelendez3 hours ago|

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Well, travel booking is one of those things every company wants to get involved with because it's just straight referral fees. I get advertisements to book travel through my phone company (T-Mobile US) and a slew of financial services companies.

If it's easy enough to add to the app and sticks around for a while, it may well be profitable even if only a small percentage of customers use it or even realize it's available.

by vanuatu3 hours ago|

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they are very profitable now!

by fg1374 hours ago|

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For context, this is an interview where Uber CEO discussed these ideas:

https://www.theverge.com/podcast/922909/dara-khosrowshahi-ub...

Can't say I am convinced.

by tayo423 hours ago|

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There's probably tons of backend projects going on, expanding in countries, payments, complying with regulations, effeciency and reliability projects. They also do food delivery. There's a whole engineering team to support