On with Kara Swisher - The End of Human Driving? with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

Kara sits down with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to dig into how applied artificial intelligence works at scale.  At Uber, AI powers everything from pricing, routing, and customer service to autonomous vehicles and sidewalk robots that deliver food. It has partnered with more than 20 autonomous vehicle manufacturers, and it’s moving aggressively into robotaxis. And although it may take many decades, Khosrowshahi believes society may eventually decide humans aren’t safe enough to be trusted behind the wheel. Kara and Dara discuss what this all means for jobs, congestion, climate and Uber’s business model.  This conversation was recorded live at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center as part of its Discovery Series on artificial intelligence.   Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So if an AV is provably 50 times safer than a human being, do you think we should allow human beings to draft? It's on. Today, I'm talking about applied artificial intelligence with Dara Khashore. the CEO of Uber. While a company that's known mostly for ride chairs and food delivery may not seem like

an obvious AI pioneer, 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 steered the company through tough times and into profitability, and now he's leading the charge as they move aggressively into autonomous vehicles. Uber has partnered

with almost every global AV company in the world, and although the transition will take decades, Dara expects that eventually all Ubers and potentially all cars will be driven by software. I want to talk to Dara because he's very straightforward and very clear about where he wants Uber to drive to, get the joke, but it's also critically important to understand other issues around AVs like safety and the importance of AI in creating the ability for these cars to do the things they do, which is miraculous in many ways.

This is the fourth installment of the Discovery Series on AI, which is jointly pretty presented by Johns Hopkins University and Vox Media. It was taped live at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. Our expert question comes from David Pluff, who was the campaign manager for Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, a senior advisor to Kamala Harris' 2024 campaign, and a former chief advisor

and board member at Uber. Stick around. Support for this show comes from me, Kara Swisher and Johns Hopkins University. This week, I interviewed Uber CEO Dara Costa Shahi in the fourth live episode of On with Kara Swisher that I've recorded at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. In every episode, I've hosted timely discussions on AI, policy, copyright, and intellectual property, and more as a part of the Hopkins Bloomberg Center's discovery series. Listen to my conversation with Krosha Shahi in this week's episode and stay tuned for more live discussions

to come from our partnership with Johns Hopkins University. Thank you for joining me here at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. for this special live conversation. I want to focus with you on a beginning with artificial intelligence because Uber uses it in a myriad of ways. There's so many applications where AI changes the equation of a business. And one of the things that I think isn't getting enough discussion is applied AI, where it actually works in companies that are not AI companies. Everything from ride matching, route optimization, surge pricing, improving search results on Uber Eats.

You're doing a good job, by the way. I like Uber Eats a lot. You become a platform. Uber's also become a platform for workers to do AI labeling and it's partnered with almost every global autonomous vehicle company. So are you an applied AI company or a company that uses a lot of AI? Because a lot of companies are trying to work their way through this issue. I mean, 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 you call us. 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. Like Amazon.

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, et cetera. But we have long been driven by AI in all things, pricing matching, et cetera. What's changed is one is there are AI applications internally for internal tools and systems and developer productivity, if you want to get into that, we can.

And then with a large language models, obviously autonomous driving is a big, big application that we can talk about as well, but the ability to just build larger models now. So, for example, if you're on Uber Eats, you have a sort that's unique to you based on your past behavior and just patterns that we know about you, what your favorite restaurants are, et cetera. And we don't want to just serve you those favorite restaurants. We also want to help you explore new places, et cetera. These models as they get larger and as we get better silicon are just getting more and more powerful and capable so that our everyday AI use cases that we used, all of that is getting more powerful. Well, you're also collecting enormous amounts of data,

so you have driver data, you have food data, you have interest data, you have all kinds of. Yes, we have a lot of data about how you live your life. we use that data essentially to improve the service for you so that we can be an everyday part of your service, whether you're going someplace or getting something. That's essentially what we do. So it just affects every single part of our business. And you know, you can debate whether or not there's a bubble, et cetera, in terms of valuations. What do you think of that? That's the obvious question. I mean, the spending is so massive. The spending on the data setters, et cetera, is massive. And, you know, I am happily not a stock market analyst. They used to be a banker

and I left that a long long time ago. I can tell you, though, that the value creation, not in the space age stuff, but in the very practical stuff of, hey, if you are shopping with us and you choose oat milk, what's the next thing that we show you, these larger models are enormously more effective

than the last generation of models. And they are translating into 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 the impact that we see on our business is very, very positive. Where is the of the impact when you think about it? Is it having all this data being able to get insights

out of the data when you're thinking about AI? So I 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, you know, they are by far the most expensive talent that we have in-house. They are using AI developer tools like Cursor 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 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 AI agent. Does that mean fewer people? It could. Now, my attitude in this is... I had someone, you and I both know well at a travel,

companies saying, oh, I had 5,000 coders. Now I shall have 1,000 next year. You know, the good news for us is we're growing really fast. And so we're growing top line 20, 21%. My attitude is if a, if an engineer can be 20, 30 percent more productive, you could take one view, which is, well, then I need 20, 30 percent less engineers. I just think they become superhumans. So I want more engineers. So we are actually hiring more engineers because every engineer got more valuable to me. And to your point, most tech companies that I talk to right now are using the opportunity to essentially keep heck count flat. You know, I can grow the company, but I only need to grow headcount. So basically, margins increase. You know, you see the technology margins are out of its

world. And it's because people can do more with the same number of people. We're hiring. So where doesn't it work? So most companies are trying to figured this out. You've been deep into AI, but a lot of, I talk to a lot of non-tech companies and they just buy it because they think they have to have it. And then they're like, I'm not using it. Our people aren't using it. We build it. Now, I'll tell you, it's, it can be hard. All right. So one example, and there's a little involved, but customer service is another area that that we use AI for. We have hundreds of millions of customer service interactions, whether if you get your delivery late, et cetera.

And we've automated some of that stuff. But when it gets an agent, you know, if you break down what an agent does, agent, first of all, has to understand, you know, a caroled, is she a good customer or she a frostor? We have a lot of fronters. You're a great customer. Terrific. Good customer. She said that her delivery was 30 minutes late.

That's your claim. The agent then goes against our own fact base. And, you know, there's an order place. There was a courier who delivered it. There was a restaurant who prepared it, said it's ready. Was it really 30 minutes late or not? Okay, it was 30 minutes late. Kara's a great customer.

Based on that, what's our policy? 30 minutes late, hey, you get your money back because you're one of our best customers. And then last is, how do we communicate that to you? Each of those elements, what kind of customer are you? What was the claim? Translate the claim into something that can be solved by logic. compare that claim with a reality on the ground, based on that reality on the ground and the claim, what is the policy that we have? And then how do I communicate that to my customer?

All of that can be powered by AI. And essentially, we are, and we will take a foundation model or a cheap Chinese open source model that's in the open source. And we will use those models to build all these solutions. And initially what we're doing is, for example, using that to empower the agent. And so the agent, instead of doing all this work themselves, the AI agent goes and does all the work and comes and says, carers a good customer, this is what she claimed. We thought this was going to be great, right? Five percent of the time, give or take, the AI makes a mistake because they do hallucinate

sometimes. And if they can't find the data, they'll make something up. So now what we have is the agents are reading the AI recommendation. They don't trust the AI recommendation. So they go do their own thing. So as opposed to like saving time, it's actually the agents like kind of doing double work. And it was not a net benefit. So that's an example of our trying it, it not working. Now, we are now going to more of a pure AI solution, which is actually having AI solve. the problem. Oh. So they made mistakes before, so you'll give them the whole thing.

It's actually interesting. So, you know, we have customers. We are having them solve problems where the cost of a mistake isn't very high. Ah, I see. And then we will learn from that. And then eventually we'll get good. I say that to a lot of people eventually. But a pure tech company can do what we're doing, which is like we're putting the work,

figure it out, iterate, iterate, iterate. A traditional company is not going to go through it. Because it is a journey. This is taken over a year. And they don't know what to do about it. It's just very hard to actually translate this stuff into the real world. And what's funny is that the latest that we've had is, if you ask the AI to follow rules, sometimes it makes mistakes. We're now kind of freeing the AI.

And we're like, treat your customers well. You know, go check what's going on. We give them very general guidance. And that is turning out to have the best results. Right. Early on. So we actually throw away the rules and we give them like, if you're a smart person, as I care, use your common sense, here are some guidelines.

Here's what I'm trying to do. The AI seems to be working really, really well there. Yeah, until it kills you. No, I'm kidding. You said one of the things that I'm interested in is autonomous vehicles. And for many people, A.Bs might be the most visceral form of AI experience. I think it is a visceral feeling when you get into an autonomous. vehicle for those of you who haven't tried definitely try it um we work with over 20 partners now

both in terms of um our mobility business but also for delivery and for trucking and what we're finding is consumers love the product um it is there's something to be said for privacy like i love talking to my uber drivers and all that and getting their stories but it's also nice being alone in the car. The technology is working and it is, I think generally the industry is taking a safety first approach, which is wonderful. Well, some people are. Yeah, I mean, I hear some undercurrents there, but I won't comment. I mean, I think generally that the industry is taking another fucking camera on those cars, but go ahead. It's, it's, I think the industry is being appropriately careful because a cost of, a cost of a hallucination in this business is a disaster, right?

Um, so for you too, if you're affiliated. Of course. Of course. And that's why we have our own safety protocols. And we have to make sure that our partners pass those, uh, safety protocols as well. But our view is we will work with the AI ecosystem. And just like I want every great qualified driver on the platform, I want every great qualified robot driver on our platform as well. Um, and so we're taking a bit of a platform approach. And I'd say it's very, very, very early. You know, we're doing millions of rides run rate a year, AV rides, but we do, you know, 35 million rides a day. Yeah, it's a small percentage. So it's a very small percentage, but it's absolutely coming. The experience is delightful. And it is, it's a great example of how AI really can change how you live every day. Because, you know, the pricing stuff, it's like, cool, but who notices? It doesn't make a difference. But these cars are pretty incredible products. Yes, they are. So Dave Richer, the CEO of Lyft, recently said there was zero likelihood that self-driving cars will replace human drivers anytime soon. He thinks the technology

isn't ready, including the AI. AVs are expensive, and riders, well, they're mixed on human drivers or not. It depends on who you are. However, you said that AVs is a single greatest opportunity for Uber. Why do you see it so differently? How do you look at the different feelings and why are you so bullish? And I will reference that quote that I got out of Travis Kalanick many years ago, where he said the best thing for Uber will be to get rid of the guy in the front seat. It was kind of cloddish at the time, although I appreciated him telling the truth. Yeah, yeah. But talk a little bit about why you think it's an opportunity. So, you know, number one, I would say 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, you and I are driving isn't going to continuously get better. The AI drivers are going to get better. And, you know, they've got cameras, LIDARs, everything. So one is, this is going to be safer method of transportation over a long period of time. 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 that eventually is 10 to 15 years from now. And I think David, to some

extent is right in that, you know, by 2030, maybe in the U.S., this is 10% of trip volume. For a mix, people would prefer, what do you want? Yeah, I mean, our belief is actually like a hybrid network is the best way forward because it allows you to responsibly transition over to AV over per time, and it allows us to identify, there are certain customers who are going to self-select, I want an AV, and there are certain customers who are very, very happy with a person. And our kind of a hybrid network allows us to keep humans busy, but then essentially as a transition happens, as again, more and more AVs on the road, introduce the technology to more customers.

But because of the advances in AI, AVs are more likely to win out, correct? I think eventually AVs will win. Right. Now, I think it'll be 20, 30 years from now. But incrementally, you're going to see AVs increase, and they will become more and more part of our everyday lives. And it won't be like, oh, my God, this is incredible. I'm getting an AV. Like, and, you know, the experience that you have in Austin or Atlanta is you just choose an Uber. And once in a while, if you're in the city centers, and that's where AVs are starting, we'll match you up with an AV. We'll say, hey, do you want to take this AV or not?

The majority people say, yes, not everybody. And the ones who say, yes, you know, rate the RV drivers at a 4-9. So nobody's there. So, well, you know, it's a great driver. Perfect score. Perfect score. Exactly. Five-star. So you had tried to do this yourself. You had an accident or a self-driving Uber.

Yeah, it was a terrible tragedy. Killed a pedestrian. You handled it. It was a difficult time. But the backup driver was also distracted and she was ultimately held responsible. But you abandoned attempts to do it yourself and you partner, as you said, longer term. Shouldn't you go back to that as difficult as that was? I don't think so because ultimately I think that the way that I see this technology going 10 to 15 years from now,

every new car sold is going to be L4 autonomy capable. And I don't want to be in the car business. I don't want to be in the car manufacturing business. And there are many other companies that are developing this technology. So I can essentially benefit from the technology. By being the reservation system. Yeah, without the enormous investments. And the benefits that we bring to AVs are enormous in that, you know, these are pretty expensive cars.

And we can essentially drive more business for these cars than anyone else in the world. And we can launch into, you know, 15,000 markets, assuming that the regulatory framework is there. Meaning Waymo's doing this to make proof of concept is what they're doing. They have their own reservation system. Yeah. I mean, they, and I would expect like a player like Waymo to, listen, they're always, it's a great brand. And so just like a Starbucks has their own app and has their own direct channel and they work with our marketplace because they want as many orders out of that box that's making coffees. Any AV company is going to want to maximize the revenue of that box with wheels.

But that doesn't mean that they're not going to have a direct channel. I fully expect Waymo to keep building their brand and hopefully work with us and continue to work with us and we'll build our business together and many other AV providers will do the same. So you're partnering with a lot of autonomous vehicle, as you said, companies. You have investments or collaborations with Aurora, Lucid, Stalantis, Pony AI. You're reportedly considering partnering with Travis Kalanick, Uber's controversial founder and ex-CEO to help fund his bid for an American subsidiary. of Pony AI, which is a Chinese AV firm. Talk about how you're thinking about this, like in terms of partnering to just give you more choice or to play bets.

We want to help the ecosystem develop. And our investing in these various companies allows them to raise more money from external partners. It gives them credibility. And it gives us a better look into their tech development and their talent. So we get to know the product better. we get to know the companies better. We help them develop.

And essentially, we are helping out the entire ecosystem because we want this technology to develop as long as it's developing safely. That's essentially what the goal is. So as the Rite Hill industry transitions in this way, it's a question of who bears the cost of owning cars, for example. Right now, drivers do. I know you used a quote that I wrote a column back in 2019

saying owning a car would be like, owning a horse someday, right, like horseback riding, essentially. But autonomous vehicles are much more expensive, as you know. So you've suggested that private owners will finance and operate large fleets of robo-taxies on Uber platforms. Explain that. Yeah, so it's, meaning you don't want to own these fleets. We don't want to own those cars. Now, early on, as the marketplace develops, as the ecosystem develops, we will initially buy cars. So, for example, our partnership Lucid. It's with a company called Neuro, terrific technology company. They're the software driver. Lucid is building the cars, and we will buy the cars initially. Once we prove out the revenue

model, and these cars, again, they don't get tired. They're going to do the average Waymo in Austin, Atlanta does more trips than 99% of her Uber drivers. So these things bring in a good amount of money. They're working all the time. Yeah. Once you prove out the revenue economics of the car, then we will have financial companies, you know, all this stuff is going to financialize. So just like you have like these private equity and private debt companies that are financing these data centers and buying Nvidia chips, that same ecosystem is going to be buying fleets of cars. And just like Marriott doesn't own any of its own hotels. There are these things called Reese, real estate investment trots. Same thing. You're going to have fleets essentially. So it's the benefit of Uber in that case. Yeah. And Uber brings demand to these and these financial owners are, again, they're going to want to maximize the revenue from the car. And the way that you maximize revenue from the car is put it on the Uber ecosystem because we've got more demand than anyone else in the universe. So as with hotels, a bunch of dentists will own the cars and then. You know, it could be. Yeah. I mean, I do think that there will be an institutional, it'll be big institutional players.

And then I think in the suburbs, et cetera, it'll be smaller fleet operators who, you know, they'll buy 10 cars, five cars, et cetera. And we actually now work with 15,000 fleet operators, large and small, who are, you know, entrepreneurs in this business all over the place. So, you know, many of those autonomous AV manufacturers have their own, as I said, ride-hill platforms. You can use Uber to order, Waymo, Robotexing Phoenix, but in San Francisco, writers have to use the Waymo app. Tesla is starting to roll at its own AV ride share. It hasn't partnered

with Uber. Talk about, is that a competition or will they eventually, because you do have more data, you have more information. I think it is competition and also a co-opetition to use that overuse word. And again, I'll use the food example. McDonald's is going to have its direct channel, and they're going to work with Uber Eats because I can drive the highest utilization. Ultimately, I think that's where the industry is going. There may be some players like that are tech only that don't want to have a front end because they don't want to invest in a front end and they will work directly with us. But I think you will have an ecosystem of some players who want to build a brand and want to work with us. And hopefully we'll have everybody

work with us one way or the other. We'll see how it turns out. So one of the issues is obviously regulatory, including around AI, privacy, safety, everything else. So every episode we get an expert to send a question for our guest. And for you, we got someone who knows Uber very well used to work for it. Let's play it. It's not Travis. Don't worry. Hey, this is David Plough. And my question for Dar is this. When I was in Uber, so many of the discussions with elected officials and regulators in the beginning was about whether a ride show them should be permitted. And if so, how, usually having to think through how you force it into regulations that permitted taxis that were decades old. But the best

conversations were the ones that happened with city officials, state officials, leaders, countries who thought, okay, if we're going to have more people getting around the cities with ride sharing, how should we change? Should we reduce parking requirements for new construction? Should we think about how ride sharing connects to mass transit? So my question is, you think about the autonomous future where so much the debate currently is still around weather permitted and how. What do you think city leaders and state leaders and leaders of countries should be thinking about in terms of parking requirements? Obviously, there's storage questions around these vehicles? How should we think about changing our public transportation system if more people are

getting around using autonomous in addition to current ride-shilling options? So I'm just curious from a city design and vision standpoint, what you think the best approach is to really get the full power of this new technology? I never got to work with David, but he has a great reputation. The issues that we are starting to talk to regulators around, and they're really good issues are, one is kind of accessibility um the other one is congestion and i say that the last is the transition all right and and just talking about each of them you know like very early on when this is a little bit before my time but but i kind of came into it as well uh when we were launching our service or expanding in in various cities there was this idea and i think it's a really important

idea, which is affordable transportation should be available to everybody. And the thing about taxis was taxis like only serve city centers because that's where you have the most rides. And one of the magics of Uber is because of the network, et cetera, we were able to serve the whole city, not just the middle of the city where the rich people live, the outskirts, et cetera, especially transportation deserts where there is no mass transit, et cetera. I think that's going to be one question and one dialogue that we're starting to have with, as it relates to ride share and autonomous ride share, which is you see most of the AV players start in the high-density areas where more wealthy people tend to live. Is that the right thing for society? You know, Waymo is expanding into the peninsula.

They haven't expanded into Oakland yet. Yeah. Is that the right decision or not, right? Now, I can't make that decision for them, but those are, I think, important questions for society ask. You know, if this technology is going to be introduced, should it be for the next five years a wealthy person technology or should it be made available to everybody? We, because we already have built essentially density of both supply and demand in these areas,

I understand it's going to be hard for an AV player to make a business work in kind of, let's say, less fortunate areas of a town. Because we have density there, we can actually do it affordably. So we think we have a lot to bring, not just to the AV players. If the prices remain low, meaning. Yeah, but we can, we, we don't have many deadhead legs. You know, we, we are very, very efficient in terms of matching the right driver, whether it's a robot or not to you for your ride, to make sure that as much of the miles are spent, with you paying, so to speak, which allows us to lower prices for everybody and allows us to have a service that doesn't just work, you know, in D.C. Center, but in the outskirts as

well. Doesn't work in Chicago Center, but works in the south side, too. It makes sense for them to start there. Like, we totally does, but we think we can help expand into other areas of town. The second is obviously congestion, which is the more the cars are driving around empty, looking for another ride, the more congestion there is in the city. And usually, as a service gets better, there's more demand for the service. We think that this is a trillion-dollar-plus opportunity because it, A.V. will help the service get better. Demand is going to go high, higher. And again, a network like ours can make sure that cars are full as much as possible. Or not driving around. Yeah. Or not driving around.

or position for that next ride. And then the last, of course, is how do you make sure there's a responsible transition? So if AVs come into her network, the network becomes a better network. And so both humans and robots are getting more business. And so it's not like AI isn't happening to our drivers. It's kind of happening with our drivers.

Yes, but I do think Travis is still telling the truth back then, was your business is better without people, except for the people in the back. I don't think that that will be true for the next 20. 20 years. Okay, because in the next 20 years, having this hybrid network is going to be the better solution, is going to be much more efficient. I think 40 years from now, yeah. I think that's right, because it'll be safer, it'll be cheaper. And that is ultimately better. So one of the issues, of course, is environmental goals, which Uber and other companies are, everyone's far short of

their state environmental goals. You had pledged to reach 100% electric vehicles in 2030, and now it's 9% in North America. You've discontinued EB bonuses for. users and emissions are higher. But everybody's playing this game right now. Just today, Ford wrote down $19.5 billion investment in EVs, slowing momentum for EVs. How is that going to affect it? And then after Uber is, of course, profitable and growing rapidly, but you don't expect AVs to be profitable for a few years going forward. You said that because of the high costs. So talk about those two things. We're electric vehicles, even though there was an upsurge, is now. this at the best. So there continues to be an upsearch for in places like Europe for example.

And so we are pushing EV miles into Europe and, you know, it's 15 plus percent of the miles. That continues to work. The good news on AV is that AVs are EVs. So I actually think that the EV transition in the U.S. rest of the world is going to get a big boost by AVs. So I do think that the EV transition is going to continue, but it definitely took a step back. It definitely took a step back, and the economics aren't working from forward, and we have had to adjust our economics as well, but I do think that a higher and higher percentage of our fleet will continue to be EVs. They're actually very, it's a really good product. I don't know why it hasn't resonated with consumers in the U.S. It is definitely resonating with consumers in Europe and Latin America,

etc. And what about growing on Uber when they're at? They don't care what they get. You know, we have Uber Green, and so, but consumers care. They say they're willing to pay more, but they won't pay more. They won't pay more. Now, what we do find with consumers is they're willing to pay with time. So an Uber Green ETA might be six minutes, and XETA might be four minutes. They'll pay with their time, but they're not going to pay more for an Uber green. All those minutes are a lie, just so you know.

You just noticed. when we get it wrong. You only notice when you get it wrong. No, no, no. Those maps are bullshit. Can you say those maps? We do her best. Just say those maps are bullshit.

They're not bullshit, Kara. Those maps are bullshit. You, hold on. You were the one who told me we'd never get profitable. We proved you wrong on that one. Did I? Okay. Yes.

It was wrong. It's a long time ago. Thank you. Did you just say you were wrong? Yes, I did. Wow. Can I remind you? Can I get a pause for that?

Thank you. I did get you your job, though. why thank you you're welcome i did it's true sir i did call him and tell him he got his job i know it's crazy he hadn't been called yet she knew before i did go figure that was an easy one um so so you're right no you you you you know why because you really believed in uber eats so let's talk about that very quickly now you have sidewalk robots delivering food again we got drones the ai you do you have drones yet uh we're working with drone companies yeah fly trucks like carrol in pluribis like you're going to drop the food.

I haven't watched that show. I've heard it's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. She has a drone deliver her food all the time. I didn't know that. Yeah. But how do you balance innovation with concerns about walkability, livability?

You know, it's not hard to picture a dystopian comedy where lunch robots kill people. No. So number one, I would say Uber Eats is an absolute star in our portfolio. Absolutely. It was 10% of our business when I took over. It's almost 50%. The team is doing a great, great job there. There isn't going to be, I think AV for mobility is clear because the first mile and last

mile taking care of, like you walk to the car, you walk away from the car. With delivery, it's actually an amalgamation of solutions. So we have sidewalk robots for short deliveries within a mile, a mile and a half, but for a three-mile delivery, it just doesn't work. for those three-mile deliveries in urban destinations, we're probably going to have to use either AVs that go on bike lanes or go on the road as well so that they can get there faster. I'd say that is behind in terms

like sidewalk robots are coming first. And then in suburbs, et cetera, it's going to be drones. And we are far from commercializing that technology. We're in the experimentation phase, but it'll be the three of those. And then the question is, who's going to take care of the first mile and last mile.

Restaurants still, they're busy. They don't like coming out of the restaurant, putting the food in the robot, et cetera. And people are lazy. You know, they don't want to come down to, if they're in a high rise. I remember when I was delivering food, like, it's amazing. People would deliver from a Chipotle three blocks away because they just didn't want to get, you know, they just wanted the food at their doorstep. So the first, well, you know, hey, I love it.

It's a big part of our business. So the first and last mile is still to be solved, but I do think AV is also going to be a huge application as it relates to Eats. And I think our Eats business is ultimately potentially going to be bigger than a mobility business. Absolutely. So earlier this year, Tesla was ordered to pay over $240 million in a crash involving autopilot. It's a big number. Things can go wrong with them. Who's responsible when you think about these questions around AI are also about the responsibility.

responsibility when it gets it wrong. And when they give you a stupid answer of who, you know, that George Washington like to do salsa or, like it doesn't matter, right? It's stupid, but it doesn't matter. You have a bigger responsibility to people because it's actually physical. So if the AV belongs to the fleet owner and uses technology from the manufacturer and technology owned by Uber, talk a little bit. I mean, when you're thinking about this, because you're relying on AI and AVs to make decisions for AI for the AV. Totally. Now, I do truly believe that AVs are going to be much, much safer than humans. The issue is that society expects humans to make mistakes, and when a robot makes a mistake,

it's unacceptable. And I think that the thought experiment is, in the U.S., there's like 35,000 automobile fatalities a year. If the AVs are 10 times big. better, they'll be killing 10 people a day, right? And is that acceptable, even though the 10 times better? The logical me would say, of course that's better, but I don't know if society can accept even that kind of an improvement. The technical answer to the question is the driver is the one who is responsible, so Tesla driver, Waymo driver, whoever the driver is. But by putting that driver onto our platform, there is responsibly that we take up.

It may not be like official legal. But if there's nobody in the front seat, who then? It's, well, again, it's a software driver. Right. You know, they are the responsible party. But we have a whole host of tests, et cetera. We have essentially a safety case that we make sure that our AI driver essentially passes, our AV driver passes, because I do think the network

you know, bear some responsibility to say, Kara is a great driver, Kara robot's a great driver, we're going to put her on the road because we think she's going to keep you safe. Right, right, presumably. And there will be a transition. But you did say there's no doubt

that humans will be less safe than robots as technology. Matures, no doubt, whatsoever. So should we allow humans to drive on the open road? It's a real question that says you're going to ask themselves. Eventually, yeah.

It's scary for a lot of people. As I said, when I wrote this piece in 2019, I got all these people calling me, I want to drive my truck. I said, you keep driving your truck, sir. So if an AV is provably 50 times safer than a human being, do you think we should allow human beings to drive? I don't think we should allow human beings to drive now.

So, yes. There we go. Yes. Yeah, you still think so. But I remember the pushback when I did this, it was insane. Like, you don't understand city slicker that here in the country. I'm like, yeah, but you can have autonomous vehicles there too, right? It works everywhere.

Right. So how do you, what's the tradeoff there? and then related, you know, you've had different struggles with drivers. What responsibility do you have as a tech company when AI and A.Bs are replacing human labor at scale? What is then their job? What are people's job? Or is it a job people shouldn't have, as you said? I mean, I think the responsibility that I see is for us to be truthful about the direction that we're going in.

And then to act, I would say, in a human manner. The example, and it's a small example, carer, but, and it's kind of obvious, which is in Austin, you know, that about call it 20% of our driver turnover naturally. Okay, so like 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, we don't want to kind of flood the market with drivers, with human drivers and AI 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 has grown 20 plus percent. So I think 10 years for 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 just think we have to handle it in a human way. They're going to be, you know, we've got over 80s. million drivers on our network, that's only going to grow over the next five's 10 years. And I just think you got to be humane about it. You have to transition. Who should pay for that? You, technology companies, who should pay for those things? Now, you're sort of further down the stack than, say, at Google. I mean, I think these are transitions that society has to make. I think it's overall, it's a cost to society. Who is governments, et cetera. I mean, training programs, et cetera. It's one of the reasons you started up with it, with it, with, which is we are then actively finding other ways of working on the platform. You know, if you think about Uber, one way of looking at us is we're a transportation platform,

whether it's moving people or things or freight. Other way of looking at us is we are the world's largest platform for flexible labor. And so we're finding other kinds of work, AI labeling. I'm like, well, if AI, if AI to some extent is going to take some of the demand that would otherwise go to humans. The HAA labeling is workers actually label. Yeah, workers label. They translate. We have now drivers driving around measuring cell phone signals.

Right. In their downtime, they help train. Yeah, by the way, it could be more than downtime. Right now, it's downtime and drivers are just making more money. You know, they can work from home if they want to if they don't feel like driving. But eventually, kind of we're building other forms of work to help, again, take some of this. some of the demand over and give them alternative ways of working. So two last questions.

China is way ahead in many ways on this. Yes. I don't know if they're way ahead, but they're moving faster. Why is that? What's gone wrong here? I think, listen, China is a very entrepreneurial culture. They move fast. We work with, you know, we ride.

They're killing us on EVs. What's that? They're killing us across the world on EVs, correct? And the China's bill of materials, Their ability to manufacture AV-ready cars at a reasonable price is way ahead of the rest of the world. So if there's one area, you know, I don't know, they're not better than we are in terms of the models today, but in terms of building these very sophisticated cars at a reasonable price, they are ahead. And that lead is growing.

It's not tricky. Across the globe. Across the globe. So I think A-V, obviously in the U.S. is safe from China if you want a Chinese competition. But we're working with a number of Chinese partners outside of the U.S. To bring this technology to bear in a really affordable way. So last question, you also have said 20 years from now driving a car by the courseback riding. You can say I was right.

But when we get there and we look back at this moment when autonomous vehicles are just starting to ramp up, what do you think we're getting right right now and what do you think we're getting wrong? You can start with wrong if you'd like, whichever. I think I don't know if it's if it's wrong we just I don't have a ready answer for it which is that the question that you ask which is you know job displacement and who's responsible like we're doing what we can like let's find other ways of work so that we're not part of the problem so to speak we are a solution but if I've got nine million plus drivers on our platform and again I think that number is going to grow over the next 10 years when I fast forward 20 30 years from now that number is going to start coming down and I'm not at least today I don't have a plan for other kinds of work for those nine million plus so I don't think we're getting it wrong

we just don't have an answer right now and there will be we have time but we don't have all the time in the world what we're getting right is I just think it's taken like 20 plus years for this tech to be developed this is not an overnight success but it is a great

great product that will make the world safer will make our streets safer and I think it'll be great for her business. So, you know, I'll take a win-win on that one. So what do you say to people who, and there's probably many here, I'm not getting in one of those fucking things. Don't, Ben, you know, no, it's, that's how would you assuage them? That's a whole point. That's a real selling point there. Don't get in our question. By the way. If they don't want to, we have, we have lots of

human drivers. I mean, I do think seriously, like, it should be up to the customer. Right. I would tell you that most people who experience AVs love it. At first, you know, for the first five minutes they're amazed and then you know seven minutes they're texting and it's just like being yeah you know in any car but you want to give them a choice but we we got it if you like him we we got it if you don't like it okay and let me just tell you may pay you a compliment your share commercial is epic thank you all right on that note thank you very much thank you very much thank you thank you today's show was produced by christian castor resell Michelle alloy Megan Bernie and Kalyn Lynch.

Ashot Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Aiman Whalen and Madeline LaPlante Duby. Our engineers are Fernando Aruta and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get to keep driving cars for as long as you want. If not, your Uber driver is circling the block forever. Go wherever you listen to podcast,

search for On with Caroushisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Caro Swisher. from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.