Uber engineers create AI replica of their CEO

Many consumers view Uber primarily as a ride-hailing and food-delivery company. But CEO Dara Khosrowshahi described the business in a very different way, saying Uber is essentially a massive code base and that its engineers are “literally the builders of the company.” He said some teams have taken that idea so far that they created a chatbot version of him — an AI “replica” used to practice presentations before meeting with senior leadership.

Khosrowshahi shared the details in an interview this week on Steven Bartlett’s podcast, The Diary of a CEO.

“One of my team members told me that some teams have built a Dara AI, you know, so that they basically make the presentation to the Dara AI as a prep for making a presentation to me,” Khosrowshahi said on the podcast. “Because you can imagine, like, you know, by the time something comes to me, there’s been a prep and a meeting of the slide deck has been beautifully honed. So they have Dara AI to tune their prep.”

Business Insider had earlier reported the same detail.

Khosrowshahi also said AI tools have already become deeply embedded in how Uber’s engineering organisation works. He estimated that about 90% of Uber’s software engineers are using AI in their day-to-day work, and around 30% qualify as “power users,” going further by rethinking and redesigning the company’s architecture with AI support.

“They are manufacturing the bricks that go into the system, and they’re architects who are kind of thinking about what the system should look like,” he said.

Khosrowshahi added: “It really is changing their productivity in a way that I’ve never, ever seen before.”