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

Recent layoffs at Uber have led some former employees to claim that artificial intelligence played a significant role in their daily work. According to six laid-off individuals interviewed by Business Insider, AI was utilized for a variety of tasks, including responding to customer service messages and answering questions in Slack.

Uber's management explained that the layoffs were primarily aimed at reducing management layers within the company. However, some former employees suggested that AI's increasing use in the workplace was a contributing factor. One employee noted that an AI tool they used cut down their work time by 80%, dubbing AI "the dynamite under the bridge for a lot of us."

Uber's Slack channel employs an AI chatbot named Genie, which provides quick responses with proper citations from the company's internal documents, thus considerably influencing employee interactions. Moreover, a customer service representative mentioned using Glean, an AI tool trained on internal company documents, to respond to inquiries from Uber drivers and passengers.

While some employees were encouraged to use AI tools like Gemini and ChatGPT to prepare for client meetings, others were cautioned against it. Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, did not mention AI as a reason for the layoffs in his memo but emphasized cutting down on management layers and reducing the number of teams with managers overseeing only one or two direct reports.