Uber cut 3,300 jobs in September. Now it is giving 30,000 employees ChatGPT

Key takeaways

Uber's job cuts and ChatGPT rollout

On September 2, Uber told employees it would cut about 10% of its office workforce, or roughly 3,300 jobs. The company said it wanted to make its organization simpler and remove some levels of management. On October 22, OpenAI announced that more than 30,000 Uber employees around the world would get ChatGPT Work. According to Tech Times UK, this is Uber's first company-wide rollout of an AI platform that can carry out tasks for employees who mainly work with information. The two announcements came seven weeks apart. Neither company has said the decisions are connected. Tech Times UK also reported that there is no evidence that ChatGPT Work caused the job cuts. Still, the timing raises questions about how Uber plans to operate.

The larger rollout follows a test involving about 1,000 employees. ChatGPT Work will be available to teams in operations, finance, marketing, and product development. Software engineers will continue using Codex, OpenAI's tool for writing computer code, according to Tech Times. ChatGPT Work connects with Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Slack. Uber is also providing its own collection of AI skills, a list of approved connections to other software, and special training. OpenAI said employees could use the platform to research topics, prepare meeting notes, create presentations, study data, and complete tasks that involve several different apps.

What Uber learned from its test and what comes next

The test showed how employees could use AI in their everyday work. Uber's vice president of engineering, Sumanth Sukumar, told TechCrunch that about 80% of the first users were not engineers. Uber also assigned 30 AI engineers to work with other teams for two weeks at a time. These groups were called AI pods. Their job was to help teams make parts of their work happen automatically, according to Tech Times UK. During the test, employees used AI to study business data, adapt training materials for different languages and locations, and create dashboards showing information chosen for particular users. Uber's chief technology officer, Praveen Neppalli Naga, said in the announcement that he wanted to see what employees would create with the tools. OpenAI president Greg Brockman said the rollout was a step toward giving more employees powerful tools to handle difficult work.

Costs and how Uber will measure results

Two important details are still missing: how much the rollout costs and how much work it saves. According to TechCrunch, Uber has not said how much it is paying for ChatGPT Work. OpenAI's announcement also did not include numbers showing whether employees were more productive or saved time. Both companies say they will share information later about how many people use the tools and what results they get. As the rollout continues, Uber plans to measure how employees use ChatGPT Work, which tasks they complete with it, and how well it works.

Are the job cuts connected to AI?

Uber described its September job cuts as a change to its management structure, not a decision caused by technology. Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said the company wanted fewer levels of management. Some managers had only one or two employees reporting directly to them. According to Business Insider, Khosrowshahi did not mention AI in the message announcing the cuts. Uber said the changes were about how the company was organized and did not mean that the people losing their jobs had done poor work.

Some employees who lost their jobs had a different view. Business Insider spoke with former Uber employees in September who said AI had become much more common in their jobs before the layoffs. One former employee said an AI tool he had started using in the weeks before losing his job reduced the time needed for his work to about one-fifth of what it used to take. Managers in Uber's advertising department had also encouraged employees to use Gemini or ChatGPT to prepare for meetings with customers. In a separate decision, Uber cut about 10% of its customer service team. Engadget reported that those cuts were directly connected to AI. Uber had also previously said it was slowing down hiring because of AI.

Together, these decisions suggest that AI may be influencing how Uber organizes its workforce, even though the company has not said its September layoffs were caused by the ChatGPT Work rollout. The article's interpretation is that Uber first reduced management levels and then gave new AI tools to the employees who remained. American Express described a similar order of events to its shareholders this week. It cut 5% of its employees while saying the changes would help prepare the company for more work to be done automatically.

What other software and technology companies can learn

For companies thinking about buying AI tools, Uber's approach offers an example that goes beyond simply paying for software access. Uber first tested the tool to learn who actually used it. It placed engineers directly with business teams to help create the first automated tasks. It chose which connections to other software employees could use instead of allowing every possible connection. It also promised to share results. The number of employees getting ChatGPT Work attracts attention, but these other steps are also important.

One big question remains unanswered, and both Uber and OpenAI have said they will provide more information later. If ChatGPT Work helps a company with 30,000 employees get much more work done, it may become harder for that company to explain future job cuts without talking about AI.