I am not sure how uber is operating internally around the use of tokens but if they actually shipped features faster than before then it is still a win. if they learn that users don't want these features or want a different version of it; they have learned this new knowledge faster than they would have if they manually coded those features, which means in principle you should be able to iterate faster. but this will collide with creative ceiling that humans exhibit in a span of time and on top of that uber is prioritizing spending money on tokens over humans which seems like a mistake. you need humans for creativity.
Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
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Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#32I still get picked up by an Uber the same way. As an end user, nothing has changed for me. So I wonder what the heck were all those billions of AI tokens burnt on that they extinguished it in just 4 months into the year?
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.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I knew they were stupid, I just didn’t know it got way down to this level
Strategy - just doing what your friends on the golf course are doing. The number of times I have been told "oh I talked to so and so and they are having SUCH a good time using X" and then three years later "oh I talked to so and so and they got rid of X as soon as they could, we should switch!"
Or the management all read the same article in PC Magazine and lo! the next day did orders come down to implement said article, regardless. Waterworld, rowing the Valdez. Some years of this usually results in some number of half-baked or half-implemented systems scattered about production, and who knows which if any are actually used, or how much stink there will be to shutdown something unpatchable. Like why are there two wiki engines, sharepoint, three different database servers, …
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#34I am not sure how uber is operating internally around the use of tokens but if they actually shipped features faster than before then it is still a win. if they learn that users don't want these features or want a different version of it; they have learned this new knowledge faster than they would have if they manually coded those features, which means in principle you should be able to iterate faster. but this will…
I used Uber for the first time in like 8 years recently, and near as I can tell it's the exact same thing it was. What features are they even adding at all much less that anyone cares about? You ask for a ride to a place, a driver shows up, money is exchanged - the end?
Sometimes things are actually just finished. They don't need to treadmill.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
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
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.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#36What has been the end result of all the tokens companies are burning? Where does it show up in quarterly results? I can’t see how it’s sustainable just based on “this feels more productive”
A friend of mine added some pretty extensive iOS UI tests to a keystone feature hit by millions every month. They'd been kicking the can down the road for years, trying to fit it in their roadmap, and with Claude running overnight they were able to bang out the whole suite in a week. I'm not sure how it would show up in quarterly results.
> I'm not sure how it would show up in quarterly results.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#37What has been the end result of all the tokens companies are burning? Where does it show up in quarterly results? I can’t see how it’s sustainable just based on “this feels more productive”
Probably shows up in OpenAI and Anthropic quarterly reports. I have to wonder if that was the point.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
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
they are very profitable now!
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#39What has been the end result of all the tokens companies are burning? Where does it show up in quarterly results? I can’t see how it’s sustainable just based on “this feels more productive”
Even if Uber really did double developer productivity, would it translate to quarterly results?
Ultimately they make money selling rides, not selling software. The Uber app is mature and adding new features is unlikely to significantly increase sales.
Writing 2x more code doesn't translate to 2x more revenue unless it results in 2x more rides.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#40What has been the end result of all the tokens companies are burning? Where does it show up in quarterly results? I can’t see how it’s sustainable just based on “this feels more productive”
A friend of mine added some pretty extensive iOS UI tests to a keystone feature hit by millions every month. They'd been kicking the can down the road for years, trying to fit it in their roadmap, and with Claude running overnight they were able to bang out the whole suite in a week. I'm not sure how it would show up in quarterly results.
I see these kinds of stories here a lot, and I'm curious whether they reflect a steady stream of need for AI coding, or whether a lot of companies have a burst of AI-appropriate coding work now that the technology is available and then will have a smaller need going forward.
Is it like the stereotypical dad who rents a power washer, powerwashes every exposed surface on his property, and then doesn't need to do any powerwashing for a few years; his neighbor who gets an Instant Pot and uses it for every meal for a month, then sees it gathering dust when the family gets tired of pressure-cooked stews; or like their neighbor who gets a microwave oven and uses it multiple times a day for decades?
I guess only time will tell.