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Uber’s Anthropic AI push hits a wall

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Uber’s Anthropic AI push hits a wall

#61

Post by nradov »

lokar wrote: post #4
amazingamazing wrote: post #2

I was told AI makes people more productive so the costs should easily pay for themselves in the form of more revenue.

The main question is: what is demand elasticity for software? If it low, and lower prices won’t generate much new demand, we should expect AI to improve engineering productivity, and for companies to reduce staff. If it is high, then we should see companies hire more engineers, increase output and lower prices (and earn more).

Every time the cost of software development has gone down due to higher level tools we've gotten higher software budgets, more software developers, and more released software. Demand appears to be effectively infinite.

Re: Uber’s Anthropic AI push hits a wall

#62

Post by nradov »

woeirua wrote: post #12

Holy misleading headlines Batman. They're not spending $3.4B on solely tokens for Anthropic are they? I don't think so... If anything the CTO is just saying, we're blowing through token budgets way faster than expected as the uptake is so immense. I think that's right from what I've seen. Once people get it, they start using AI for everything. Obviously that's not going to be sustainable forever. I do think we're goi…

Why would that not be sustainable forever? Over the long run the price per token is likely to decline as both hardware and software gets more efficient.

Re: Uber’s Anthropic AI push hits a wall

#66

Post by ares623 »

sd9 wrote: post #8

I see things like 2 sentence menu summaries in Uber Eats that are completely off in tone. A quick sample from my app right now: “Authentic Caribbean Flavours. Jerk Chicken, Curry Goat, and more. A vibrant culinary journey awaits.” - local Caribbean place “Customisable burgers with 250,000+ toppings. Hand-cut fries and rich milkshakes await.” - Five Guys “Authentic Indian cuisine bursting with rich flavours. Perfect f…

You misunderstand. AI cannot fail. It can only _be_ failed. In this case, it was failed by the restaurant industry's lack of actual diversity. _They_ need to do better, not AI.

Re: Uber’s Anthropic AI push hits a wall

#67

Post by rchaud »

temp8830 wrote: post #18
kelnos wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the hilarious "250,000+ toppings" error, these summaries seem... fine? I would be unsurprised to learn that a human came up with them, even. Seems like pretty common/standard marketing copy.

But why does Uber need to spend 3.4B on injecting a useless blob of text between me and an overpriced burger delivered by a struggling illegal immigrant in a smoke-belching jalopy? I know the counter-argument. "This will increase sales". You know what else would increase sales? Spending the 3.4B to replace the above with a uniformed delivery service similar to UPS. That job could pay benefits.

For the same reason the shoe industry spends billions sponsoring athletes and sports teams to hawk their gear. It's to build layer upon layer of abstractions to move the conversation away from how the sausage is made, and towards something that could justify their own bloated salaries, like promoting "sporting excellence" or "tech innovation".

Re: Uber’s Anthropic AI push hits a wall

#68

Post by recursivecaveat »

sd9 wrote: post #13
kelnos wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the hilarious "250,000+ toppings" error, these summaries seem... fine? I would be unsurprised to learn that a human came up with them, even. Seems like pretty common/standard marketing copy.

Maybe each one is fine in isolation - what doesn’t come across from the sample is that every single one is practically the same. If you have Uber Eats, open up the app and look through the summaries for a bunch of restaurants and you’ll see what I mean. And besides that, this just feels like something nobody asked for that probably doesn’t sell more food compared to, for example, more pictures.

It seems to have been at least slightly improved, but youtube video summaries suffered from this to an almost comical degree not long ago. The AI voice is already pretty recognizable and stilted, then you constrain it to avoid saying anything negative or spoilery about the video, and (presumably) don't let it remember past output. No surprise its extremely repetitive. For humans you're at least getting different people's voices, on different days, who remember that they just wrote about how the last one was a "unique look highlighting the importance of design".

Re: Uber’s Anthropic AI push hits a wall

#69

Post by array_key_first »

kelnos wrote: post #11
sd9 wrote: post #8

I see things like 2 sentence menu summaries in Uber Eats that are completely off in tone. A quick sample from my app right now: “Authentic Caribbean Flavours. Jerk Chicken, Curry Goat, and more. A vibrant culinary journey awaits.” - local Caribbean place “Customisable burgers with 250,000+ toppings. Hand-cut fries and rich milkshakes await.” - Five Guys “Authentic Indian cuisine bursting with rich flavours. Perfect f…

Aside from the hilarious "250,000+ toppings" error, these summaries seem... fine? I would be unsurprised to learn that a human came up with them, even. Seems like pretty common/standard marketing copy.

Right, it seems just like a marketing blip, which is bad, because marketing isn't meant to be informative, it's meant to be manipulative.

If we're using AI and we're still getting the gobbley gook nothing burger marketing word soup, then what are we doing here?

No, not everything IS rich and authentic. And no, it's not awaiting me!

Re: Uber’s Anthropic AI push hits a wall

#70

Post by mizzao »

jpalomaki wrote: post #52

”Engineers were actively encouraged to use tools like Claude Code and Cursor, even ranking them on internal leaderboards based on usage” Token maxxing? Might explain high costs if you are actively encouraging developers to spend as much tokens as possible.

The good ol' measuring inputs, not outputs...

(Other inputs from days of yore: number of people that report to you, budget allocation to your team. Nothing new under the sun!)

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