Uber CEO talks about AI's impact at work, including a staff-build Dara AI
Some Uber employees are using an artificial intelligence version of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to rehearse high-stakes presentations before meeting him in person.
Khosrowshahi, in an interview with The Diary of a CEO podcast, revealed the existence of his AI twin, which he said is being used by employees.
"One of my team members told me that some teams have built a Dara AI, so that they basically make their presentation to the Dara AI as a prep for making a presentation to me," the CEO said in the podcast.
"Because you can imagine, by the time something comes to me, there's been a prep and a meeting, and the slide deck has been beautifully honed. So they have Dara AI to tune their prep."
Khosrowshahi made the remarks amid the widespread adoption of AI tools in workplaces, even in Uber, where 90% of its coders are now using AI, including 30% who are power users.
"There's about 30% of them that are using [AI] at a completely accelerated pace and really is changing productivity in a way that I've never been seen before," Khosrowshahi said.
The widespread adoption of AI tools comes with a range of concerns from the workforce, including worries about being replaced by the technology that they are training.
Khosrowshahi believes that 70 to 80% of work done by humans will be replaced by AI within the next 10 years, saying that the technology's impact on society is "going to be giant."
For coders at Uber, the CEO believes that their jobs will shift from writing code to orchestrating AI agents that will write the code or build systems for them.
"It becomes more of an orchestration job versus a manual writing job, but the job will still be there," he said.
"And my attitude is if my average engineer became 25% more efficient, which we haven't gone there yet, I'm going to hire more engineers because I want to go faster there. There's still lots of unsolved problems that we haven't solved."
Impact of AI at work
Khosrowshahi was light-hearted when he talked about Dara AI in the podcast, and even joked that his team wouldn't let him see the code for it.
The CEO does not seem fazed by AI's projected disruption at Uber.
"I'm not paranoid... I think my instinct is just to go, just move forward," he said. "We are, I would say, moving headlong into AI."
He pointed out that the technology has long been driving the company's work, and that AI is a core skill set within his workforce.
He also underscored that while massive changes are under way due to the technology, he believes the rate of change shouldn't be slowed down.
"And if you're a part of that change, at least you can have some say as to how that change imprints on society and imprints on the real world. And so for me, I'm leaning in."
His upbeat stance contrasts with broader unease among corporate leaders about AI's impact on top jobs.
Data from edX and Workplace Intelligence in 2023 revealed that 47% of the C-suite believe that "most" or "all" of the CEO role should be replaced by AI.
Among CEOs who participated in the poll, 49% also believe that "most" or "all" of their role should be completely automated.
