Uber Technologies Inc said it has cut 10% of jobs within its customer service operations as part of a broader effort to simplify its ranks and "embrace artificial intelligence (AI).”
The company announced the cuts within the community operations team on July 22, saying it’s working "to simplify operations, strengthen in-person collaboration, and continue to embrace AI,” an Uber spokesperson said by email. Employees who’d been working remotely for the team were also asked to relocate to a hub office, consistent with the company’s return-to-office mandate, the spokesperson said.
"Our organisation has become too complex and siloed,” Megha Yethadka, Uber’s vice president of global community operations, said in a memo to her division on July 22. The department "has made some strides” in using AI, she said, "but to unlock this potential, we need an effective organisation to layer AI on. We cannot scale frontier technology on top of fragmented processes.”
Businesses, from the financial services company Block Inc to cloud company Oracle Corp, have been citing AI as a reason for job cuts in recent months. This marks the first time Uber has tied layoffs to AI efficiency pushes and is the second round of reductions in less than two months to simplify team structures.
Uber’s shares stood largely unchanged in after-hours trading. In June, the company cut 23% of its so-called people division, representing less than one per cent of its 34,000 global employees, after a new president took over. Uber doesn’t provide specific figures for the size of its customer service operation.
The company said in May that it would slow hiring due to the internal use of AI, but it’s still recruiting for more than 500 roles on its jobs page, including for engineers to support robotaxi partnerships. – Bloomberg
