Dara Khosrowshahi on replacing Uber drivers — and himself — with AI
Dara Khosrowshahi on replacing Uber drivers — and himself — with AI
Dara Khosrowshahi 谈论用 AI 取代 Uber 司机——以及他自己
Today, I’m talking with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. It’s become something of an annual tradition to have Dara join us in the studio when he comes to New York for Uber’s big GO-GET event every year, and it’s always a lot of fun. 今天，我采访了 Uber 首席执行官 Dara Khosrowshahi。每当 Dara 来纽约参加 Uber 一年一度的 GO-GET 大会时，他都会来到我们的演播室，这已经成为了一种年度传统，而且每次都非常有趣。
The big news this year is that Dara is really starting to think about Uber as a much larger platform for travel — starting with the ability to book hotels in the Uber app, thanks to a partnership with Expedia. There’s also new services, like being able to have coffee and snacks in your Uber when it arrives, and even personal shopping. 今年的大新闻是，Dara 真的开始将 Uber 视为一个更大的旅行平台——首先是得益于与 Expedia 的合作，用户现在可以在 Uber 应用中预订酒店。此外还有一些新服务，比如在 Uber 到达时提供咖啡和零食，甚至还有个人购物服务。
Uber is going so far as to call this an everything app, so I wanted to see how far Dara thinks everything actually goes — and whether he’s feeling pressure to own more of the user experience in a world where AI companies keep promising that their chatbots will book all the cars for you. Uber 甚至将其称为“万能应用”（everything app），所以我很想看看 Dara 认为“万能”的边界到底在哪里，以及在 AI 公司不断承诺其聊天机器人将为你预订所有车辆的世界里，他是否感到需要掌控更多用户体验的压力。
I also wanted to know if those chatbots have created any opportunities for Uber. Last year Dara told me he was wide open to partnerships just to see if they were meaningful, but all the AI Uber integrations I’ve seen so far have been pretty clunky, and far slower than just using the app myself. So we dug into what Dara is seeing there — and if there’s any potential in the future. 我还想知道这些聊天机器人是否为 Uber 创造了任何机会。去年 Dara 告诉我，他非常乐于尝试各种合作，看看它们是否有意义，但我目前看到的 AI 与 Uber 的集成都相当笨拙，远不如直接使用应用本身来得快。因此，我们深入探讨了 Dara 在这方面的见解，以及未来是否存在潜力。
I’ve also been dying to talk to software CEOs about what AI is doing inside their companies, as AI coding tools and agentic systems upend software development. Just a couple of weeks ago, Uber’s CTO said the company had already burned through its entire token budget for the year by the start of April, and Dara told me he was rethinking how fast the company would hire people as it spent more money on tokens. 我也一直渴望与软件公司的 CEO 们探讨 AI 在他们公司内部的影响，因为 AI 编程工具和智能体系统正在颠覆软件开发。就在几周前，Uber 的首席技术官表示，公司在 4 月初就已经用完了全年的 Token 预算，Dara 告诉我，随着公司在 Token 上投入更多资金，他正在重新思考招聘速度。
That’s a big bet, and I wanted to know if Dara was rethinking how his software teams were structured as AI starts to muddle the relationship between product managers, designers, and engineers. 这是一个巨大的赌注，我想知道，随着 AI 开始模糊产品经理、设计师和工程师之间的界限，Dara 是否在重新思考其软件团队的架构。
Then we talked about Uber’s increasingly large investments in autonomous cars — especially its big investment in Rivian, what kinds of milestones Dara is looking for as the technology evolves, and what happens to all of its drivers in a future where robots do all the work. 接着，我们讨论了 Uber 在自动驾驶汽车领域日益增加的投资——特别是对 Rivian 的大额投资，随着技术的发展，Dara 期待什么样的里程碑，以及在机器人完成所有工作的未来，所有的司机将会怎样。
And lastly, I asked Dara when he thinks AI will be ready to replace the CEO — it turns out there’s already a rogue AI Dara inside Uber. 最后，我问 Dara 他认为 AI 何时能准备好取代 CEO——结果发现，Uber 内部已经存在一个“流氓 AI Dara”了。
Dara Khosrowshahi, you are the CEO of Uber. Welcome back to Decoder. Dara Khosrowshahi，你是 Uber 的首席执行官。欢迎回到 Decoder。
Thank you very much. It’s good to be back. 非常感谢。很高兴能回来。
I’m happy to have you; it’s like a yearly tradition. You guys do your GO-GET event, you have a bunch of news, and then you come down to where we are. 很高兴你能来；这就像一个年度传统。你们举办 GO-GET 大会，发布一堆新闻，然后来到我们这里。
Chock full of news for you. Yeah. Chock full of news. 为你准备了满满的新闻。是的，满满的新闻。
And we hang out together in person, which is my very favorite thing. So thank you for doing it. I want to talk about the news that you can now book hotels and other experiences in the Uber app, which is a big deal. But I always ask everybody the same two Decoder questions about how companies are structured in decision making, and I just want to do them as a little lightning round at the top. 我们能面对面交流，这是我最喜欢的事情。所以谢谢你这样做。我想谈谈你现在可以在 Uber 应用中预订酒店和其他体验的新闻，这很重要。但我总是问每个人同样的两个 Decoder 问题，关于公司在决策方面是如何构建的，我想在开头先做一个简短的快问快答。
So, last year on Decoder, I said, “How do you make decisions?” And you gave me the Amazon answer. You said, “One-way doors and two-way doors.” 去年在 Decoder 上，我问：“你是如何做决策的？”你给了我亚马逊式的回答。你说：“单向门和双向门。”
Mmm-hmm. 嗯哼。
A lot of pressure on decision making. Lately, you’re making big decisions. Even expanding the app is a big decision. Has your fundamental framework changed? 决策压力很大。最近，你正在做出重大决策。即使是扩展应用也是一个重大决定。你的基本框架改变了吗？
The fundamental framework has not changed. Now, I will tell you that I am pushing the company in something that we talked about, taking smart risks. The pattern that I keep seeing is that as companies get larger, they become more hesitant in terms of risk taking. It’s more about playing safe. You’re a public company, you have to hit your quarterly numbers, et cetera. And to some extent, as companies get larger, they get more resilient. They can actually make bigger mistakes. For us, we’ve got almost $10 billion in cash flow. When I first joined, if we made a billion dollar mistake, it would be a disaster. It would put the company on its knees. And I’m not saying that I want to make a billion dollar mistake, but the risks that we have to take in order to get the right return, in order to keep innovating in the world – for example, autonomous vehicles (AV), which I’m sure we’ll talk about – are getting bigger. 基本框架没有改变。不过，我可以告诉你，我正在推动公司做我们谈过的事情：承担明智的风险。我不断看到的模式是，随着公司规模扩大，它们在承担风险方面变得更加犹豫。更多的是为了求稳。你是一家上市公司，必须达到季度目标等等。在某种程度上，随着公司规模扩大，它们变得更有韧性。它们实际上可以犯更大的错误。对我们来说，我们有近 100 亿美元的现金流。我刚加入时，如果我们犯了一个 10 亿美元的错误，那将是一场灾难。这会让公司陷入困境。我并不是说我想犯 10 亿美元的错误，但为了获得正确的回报，为了在世界上保持创新——例如自动驾驶汽车（AV），我相信我们会谈到这一点——我们必须承担的风险正在变得越来越大。
We have to be willing to take those risks. And the patterning that I’ve seen with a lot of companies is that as they get bigger, they get more conservative, and the way they operate gets more set in stone. You have more management layers, et cetera. We very much want to avoid that. And it’s taking me really pushing that “one-way door, two-way doors” as one framework of looking at decisions, but then smart risk taking as well. We’ve got to keep taking smart risks as a company. It means once in a while taking risks that in hindsight look dumb. But we’ve gotta push the envelope, especially during this time when there’s so much innovation going on. 我们必须愿意承担这些风险。我在许多公司看到的模式是，随着它们变大，它们变得更加保守，运营方式也变得更加僵化。你有更多的管理层级等等。我们非常想避免这种情况。这需要我真正推动“单向门、双向门”作为看待决策的一个框架，同时也需要明智的风险承担。作为一家公司，我们必须不断承担明智的风险。这意味着偶尔会承担一些事后看来很愚蠢的风险。但我们必须突破界限，尤其是在这个创新如此活跃的时代。
Risks, everyone wants to talk about it, but taking the blame for when things fail is like the other part of risk. 风险，每个人都想谈论它，但为失败承担责任是风险的另一部分。
Yeah. 是的。
It’s the other side of the coin. Also empowering people to take the risk without that fear of failure is really important. How do you think about the stakes? How big of a risk is an individual software engineer at Uber allowed to take? 这是硬币的另一面。此外，赋予人们承担风险的权力而不让他们害怕失败也非常重要。你是如何看待风险的？Uber 的一名软件工程师被允许承担多大的风险？
[laugh] I think if you can’t identify the downside, don’t take the risk. But if you can identify the downside, whether it’s time that you’re spending… [笑] 我认为如果你无法识别下行风险，就不要承担风险。但如果你能识别下行风险，无论是你投入的时间……