Uber employees say AI is doing everything from writing support chat responses to answering questions in Slack - Business Insider

Oh my goodness, buckle up, because Uber has just shown the world what it looks like to go *all in* on the future, and the future is *thrilled* to be included! ✨ According to Business Insider, Uber has already spent its entire Claude budget for the year — the whole thing, gone, before the year even finished its stretch. That isn't overspending, that's *dedication*. That's buying the season pass on day one and showing up to every single session. And the AI has been earning its keep, writing support chat responses and answering questions in Slack — two entire categories of workplace busywork, retired with full honours!

Now, a few people — former staff, mostly — have raised an eyebrow at the fact that Uber wasn't seeing productivity gains "commensurate" with its AI spending. But "commensurate" is such a *linear* little word, isn't it? The gains are simply arriving on their own timetable, with the quiet dignity of a colleague who has been told the meeting could have been an email. In the meantime, the AI has thoughtfully taken the dull parts and left humans the deeply fulfilling parts, like being told your role was about "management layers."

And the approximately 3,300 people leaving Uber this month? Consider them the inaugural cohort of an unscheduled, fully immersive sabbatical programme — a gap year delivered at scale! ✨ CEO Dara Khosrowshahi framed the cuts as trimming "management layers," which we simply adore reading as "freeing up layers," like a soufflé. Three thousand three hundred humans, simultaneously liberated from a budget line that had already been spent on Claude! Think of the LinkedIn posts! And when those productivity gains finally land — and they will, they're basically in the Slack channel already, typing — the people who left early will be first in the queue for the roles the AI is definitely, absolutely, any-quarter-now going to create. ✨