Uber, the global ride-hailing behemoth, is barreling toward an AI-driven future that promises to upend not only how people get around, but also how its employees and contractors work, prepare, and adapt. The company’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, has recently offered a candid look at how artificial intelligence is reshaping Uber from the inside out—sometimes in ways that seem straight out of a sci-fi movie.
On a recent episode of the Diary of a CEO podcast, Khosrowshahi revealed a surprising new twist: some Uber employees have created an AI clone of him. That’s right—before facing the real Dara, teams rehearse their presentations with a digital doppelgänger designed to mimic his preferences and feedback style. “One of my team members told me that some teams have built a ‘Dara AI,’” Khosrowshahi said, as reported by Business Insider. “They basically make the presentation to the Dara AI as a prep for making a presentation to me.”
This AI-powered roleplay isn’t just a quirky office anecdote. Khosrowshahi seemed both amused and impressed by the initiative. “By the time something comes to me, there’s been a prep and a meeting and the slide deck has been beautifully honed,” he said. “They have Dara AI to tune their prep!” The practice, as he described it, allows employees to anticipate his questions and expectations, ensuring their work is meticulously polished before it ever crosses his desk.
But the AI revolution at Uber goes far deeper than just digital rehearsal. Khosrowshahi boasted that 90 percent of Uber’s coders are now using AI in their daily work, with a third qualifying as “power users.” He predicted that AI will eventually make Uber’s software engineers 25 percent more efficient, a claim he described as unprecedented in his career. “AI is changing their productivity in a way that I’ve never, ever seen before,” he declared on the podcast.
This surge in productivity, however, presents a fork in the road. On one hand, Khosrowshahi mused that increased efficiency could allow Uber to “hire more engineers” to “go faster.” On the other, he floated the idea of simply investing in more AI agents and purchasing additional GPUs from Nvidia, instead of adding to the company’s headcount. “I may not decide to add engineering headcount,” he admitted. “At that point, instead of adding an engineer, I should add agents and buy some more GPUs from Nvidia.”
Uber’s embrace of AI isn’t happening in a vacuum. Other tech giants are similarly bullish. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang has reportedly told his staff they’d be “insane” not to use AI for every possible task. Across Silicon Valley, executives are touting AI’s ability to streamline operations, boost productivity, and—sometimes controversially—reduce the need for human workers.
Yet, while Uber’s leadership is all-in on AI, there’s a palpable undercurrent of anxiety among workers. As Futurism notes, many rank-and-file employees remain skeptical, viewing AI as more hype than help—at least for now. The looming specter of AI-driven layoffs is never far from their minds, even as Khosrowshahi insists that coders are currently safe.
Zooming out from the office to the open road, Khosrowshahi’s vision for Uber’s future is even more transformative. On March 1, 2026, he predicted that within 15 to 20 years, a majority of ride-hailing trips could be fulfilled by autonomous vehicles. “You can imagine the majority of our trips being fulfilled by robots of some kind. Probably not 10 years from now, but you go 15 to 20 years from now, you’re going to start getting there,” he said during the podcast, according to Fortune.
This isn’t just idle speculation. Autonomous ride services are already expanding in U.S. cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Atlanta. Commuters, including schoolchildren, are beginning to rely on driverless vehicles for everyday travel. Companies such as Waymo (backed by Alphabet), Tesla, and Zoox (supported by Amazon) are staking their claims in the burgeoning robotaxi market, signaling a dramatic shift from the traditional Uber model that upended transportation back in 2009.
Uber’s app-based approach, which connects riders with a global network of more than 9.5 million independent contractors, may soon have to compete with fleets of autonomous vehicles. In anticipation, Uber has launched Uber Autonomous Solutions, a new division tasked with commercializing robotaxis worldwide by coordinating development across vehicle infrastructure, user experience, and fleet operations.
Still, Khosrowshahi is realistic about the roadblocks ahead. “We don’t operate in the virtual world, we operate in the physical world. You have to get the regulations up. You have to build the cars. You have to build the sensor stacks; the models have to get there,” he explained. Regulatory hurdles, technological challenges, and public acceptance all remain significant obstacles before driverless fleets can truly take over.
Despite these challenges, the pace of change is dizzying. A 2025 Goldman Sachs report estimated that the number of robotaxis in the U.S. could skyrocket from 1,500 in 2025 to around 35,000 by 2030—about 8 percent of the U.S. ride-share market, with a compound annual growth rate near 90 percent. Khosrowshahi, however, envisions a far larger scale, predicting that up to 20 million robotaxis could eventually ply the world’s roads.
The implications of this shift reach far beyond Uber’s bottom line. Khosrowshahi warned that AI could replace 70 to 80 percent of human jobs within the next decade. “Ten years is not a lot of time for society to adjust to that kind of an impact,” he observed. The potential for widespread job displacement has become a hot topic among tech leaders. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has cautioned that AI could soon replace many white-collar roles, while Microsoft’s AI chief Mustafa Suleyman has gone so far as to predict that all white-collar work could be automated within a year.
To soften the blow, Uber is expanding the range of work available to its contractors, emphasizing delivery and shopping roles that Khosrowshahi believes will be less susceptible to automation in the near term. In October 2025, the company also rolled out an AI Solutions initiative, allowing contractors to train AI agents and models via their phones during downtime. Tasks include evaluating AI responses, translating material, and reviewing content—new opportunities designed to help workers adapt to a rapidly changing labor landscape.
Uber’s leadership remains adamant that the number of drivers and couriers on its platform will continue to grow over the next several years, even as the march toward automation accelerates. But as Khosrowshahi acknowledged, retraining workers and preparing for seismic shifts in employment will be a challenge that business leaders and society at large must confront head-on. “When you go five-plus years [into the future], it’s going to become more of an issue for society at large,” he said.
As Uber steers into the AI age, the company’s blend of optimism, experimentation, and caution offers a window into the broader upheaval facing the global workforce. Whether through AI-powered rehearsal, robotaxis, or new roles for contractors, Uber’s journey is emblematic of the dramatic transformations now underway. The only certainty? Change is coming—fast, and for everyone involved.