Uber’s Robotaxi Playbook, the End of Human Driving & $10B Bet on Robots | Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber CEO) | EP #244

Summary

Podcast Summary: Moonshots with Peter Diamandis — Uber’s Robotaxi Playbook, the End of Human Driving, and $10B Bet on Robots

Guest: Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber CEO)
Host: Peter Diamandis, PHD Ventures
Episode: #244
Date: April 2, 2026
Theme: The future of autonomous vehicles, automation's impact on society, Uber's strategy, and how technology is reshaping transportation and human work.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the near- and long-term future of autonomous vehicles (AVs), urban mobility, automation’s societal impact, and the practical realities behind Uber’s multi-billion dollar push into robotaxis and coordinated robotics. Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, joins Peter Diamandis and an engaged live audience (including teens and industry experts) for a candid, wide-ranging Q&A on the moonshot opportunities and challenges facing mobility, regulation, insurance, employment, and the human experience as robots transform how we move.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Are We Approaching the End of Human Driving?

• Teen Q&A on Driving Licenses (00:00, 17:24):

  • Teens raised the question: With self-driving cars becoming prevalent, will the next generation need to learn how to drive?

    • Dara: “You may not have to get your driver’s license, but it’s good.” (00:06)
    • Peter and Dara agree that while AV mass production is accelerating, it will still take years before human drivers become obsolete.
    • Dara: “Humans will be demonstrably less safe than autonomous [vehicles] ... Regulators will have to decide what a human license looks like.” (00:14, 02:41)
    • Human driving will likely persist for hobby/sports (like race car driving), though the number of human drivers will dwindle “just like there are less people who know how to ride a horse.” (02:41)

  • Memorable Moment:

    • Dara recalls, “I like free will ... if you want to drive, that’s not a problem ... but I can definitely see a future where there are going to be fewer and fewer drivers on the road.” (02:41)

2. Adoption & Regulation of Autonomous Vehicles

• Passenger Trust vs. Regulatory Hurdles (01:01):
  • Moderator: “What’s harder, convincing regulators AVs are safe, or convincing passengers to get into one?”
    • Dara: Passenger adoption is outpacing regulatory action; “80% of people say yes” to an AV ride, and “the 80% who say yes love the experience.” (01:29, 01:33)
    • Peter: “Regulators obviously move a little bit slower ... but this is a technology that I think more people are excited about than not.” (01:37, 01:41)

3. Infrastructure for AVs and Urban Air Mobility

• Vertiports and Real Estate (03:34):

  • Future “flying cars” (eVTOLs) will require “vertiports”—hubs in “very high traffic areas, airports, or city centers.” (03:48)

    • Dara: “We’ve got perfect data in these cities as to what are the best places for you to place vertiports ... there’s absolutely a real estate opportunity.” (04:21, 04:28)

  • Notable Quote:

    • Dara: “If you’re interested [in vertiports], give our Uber folks or the Joby folks a call.” (04:28)

4. Building Marketplaces in the Age of AI

• Supply-Led Growth Strategy (05:05):
  • Uber’s historic strategy is “supply led”—focusing on building liquidity (drivers, cars, restaurants), believing “if you have product market fit, the demand will show up.” (05:05)
    • Dara: “Put real tools in place to become the easiest to use and the most liquid as it relates to supply ... the demand will show up.” (05:05)

5. Insurance and Legal Implications for AVs

• How Will Insurance Work for Robots? (06:04):

  • Multiple insurance layers: AV providers take responsibility for their vehicles; Uber also provides additional coverage for riders. Autonomous vehicles are statistically safer, but insurance structures are evolving. (06:34)
    • Peter: “You’re going to have different layers of insurance as well ... so that people are covered and they can feel comfortable taking an AV” (06:34)
    • Revealed: “About half the court cases, legal, in the US are car accident related.” (07:08)

• Embedded Insurance & Industry Challenges (15:58, 16:18):

  • Dara: “Absolutely we would consider embedded insurance ... Is it going to be the driver? The platform? Some combination? All of that is TBD. The challenge ... you need the volume ... law of large numbers.” (16:18)

6. Coordinating Multi-Robot Networks

• Orchestrating Fleets of Ground/Air Robots (07:29):
  • Uber’s platform already manages millions of unpredictable human drivers using real-time recalculations.
  • Dara looks forward to AI and robots: “Machines are much more predictable ... and will have much higher acceptance rates than humans as well.” (08:48, 09:58)
    • “Stitching together one ride with another ... is exactly what we’re doing at scale—40 million trips a day.” (09:56)

7. Job Loss, Augmentation, and the Future of Human Labor

• Will Robots Destroy Jobs? (19:36–23:50):

  • Both Peter and Dara are optimistic but realistic:

    • Dara: “Automation typically doesn’t replace work, but augments work ... there are less humans working in that plant than 10 years ago, but there are plenty around.” (20:35, 21:00)
    • As the nature of work shifts, Uber aims to provide flexible work and help retrain displaced workers.
    • Dara: “There’s going to be ... a lot of augmentation of work, and some replacement of work ... Our society has been able to adjust ... but the pace of change is faster than even I expected.” (21:33, 22:03)
    • “By 2035, we’ve got 20 million people on our platform vs. 10 million now. They may be doing different tasks, but there will be plenty of work to go around.” (22:29)
    • “Let’s do something about it ... we as a platform are doing something.” (22:54)

  • Ownership for Labor:

    • Dara: “To bring labor along so that they can be owners ... is a very, very positive direction that we go in.” (23:34)

8. Competition, China, & Global Partnerships

• Lessons from China & Global Strategy (13:22):
  • Uber learned the limits of competing with local giants and now works “building bridges” with Chinese OEMs and AV partners (e.g., BYD, Pony, WeRide, possibly Baidu).
    • “We have a big stake in Didi, the largest Chinese [rideshare player] ... haven’t monetized that yet ... Looking forward to that at some point.” (14:37, 14:46)
    • “We believe ... the Chinese have a lot to offer. And we’re working with these Chinese partners today.” (15:23, 15:27)

9. Affordable Transportation & Universal Basic Services

• $250/month Living and Transportation Moonshots (10:44):
  • Mark presents a universal basic services challenge (housing, food, energy, connectivity, mobility for $250/month) and asks Uber to participate.
    • Peter: “As we build out Uber in cities ... our service isn’t just available where wealthy people live, but throughout the cities and outer boroughs.” (11:29)
    • Autonomous vehicles will eventually help make transportation “cheaper as well ... [safe] transportation available to everybody, regardless of where you live.” (11:29)

10. Culture, Scale, and “Doing the Right Thing” at Uber

• Maintaining Entrepreneurial Culture as Uber Grows (26:03, 28:18):
  • Do the Right Thing: “That’s a value we introduced during a difficult time ... the description is, period. You are responsible for doing the right thing.” (26:49, 27:08)
  • Responsibility and Agency: “Individuals at Uber ... still can impact the direction of the entire company ... do the right thing is a message of responsibility at all levels.” (27:34)
  • Risk & Growth: “Companies tend to get more conservative as they get bigger. The exact opposite should be true ... you can take big bets at large scale.” (28:20)

11. Deciding When to Make Big Bets

• Strategy for Expansion & Adjacencies (29:25–30:35):
  • Uber’s expansion always follows a logic of “does it rhyme with what we do?”
    • “We started with rides … then eats, then freight, then elevated … [now] flexible work through AI … if it rhymes, I’ll listen. If it doesn’t rhyme, it’s better for someone else to do it.” (30:20–30:35)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–02:41: Future of human driving, licenses, sports, generational change
• 01:01–01:45: Acceptance of AVs: passengers vs. regulators
• 03:34–04:34: Flying cars and real estate opportunities (vertiports)
• 05:05–05:54: Building AI/automation-driven marketplaces
• 06:04–07:21: Insurance in an autonomous world
• 07:29–10:41: Multi-robot system challenges; Uber’s predictive dispatch
• 10:44–13:12: Affordable transportation, universal basic services, and Uber’s social role
• 13:22–15:43: Global competition and partnerships (China, Didi, BYD, etc.)
• 15:58–17:21: Embedded insurance, actuarial challenges
• 19:36–23:50: Automation, future labor, job replacement/augmentation
• 24:05–25:36: Combustion engines vs. EVs, transition timeline
• 26:03–28:18: Maintaining entrepreneurial culture, “do the right thing”
• 29:25–30:35: Deciding when to pursue new fields/innovations

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Notable Quotes

• Dara Khosrowshahi:

  • “So much of driving now is the technology in the car, around the car. Technology is always going to be a part of the human experience.” (00:14)
  • “I like free will ... if you want to drive, that’s not a problem.” (02:41)
  • “80% of people say yes [to riding in an AV].” (01:29)
  • “I’m psyched for machines because they’re much more predictable and they usually say what they’re going to do.” (09:56)
  • “There’s absolutely a real estate opportunity [in vertiports].” (04:28)
  • “Automation typically doesn’t replace work, but augments work.” (20:35)
  • “If it rhymes with what we do, I’ll listen. If it doesn’t rhyme, it’s better for someone else.” (30:32)

• Peter Diamandis:

  • “Now that’s a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.” (00:52)
  • “My son is 21 years old. He doesn’t have a driver’s license, and he doesn’t seem to have any intention of getting one. He’s got a big Uber bill, but that’s OK.” (18:43, 18:49)

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Tone & Language

• The tone is open, candid, practical, and optimistic, balancing technical explanations with real-world analogies and humor.
• Dara frequently conveys humility and realism (“It ain’t perfect. I fight it every single day…” (28:34)).
• The discussion is conversational, with deep dives into technological, societal, and policy implications, while always coming back to the human experience.

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In summary:
This episode explores not just the ‘how’ and ‘when’ of AVs but the deep implications for society, labor, cities, and our cultural relationship with driving, work, and risk. Dara Khosrowshahi and Peter Diamandis offer rare, detailed insights into the transformative bets Uber is making—literally and figuratively—on a future where humans and robots co-create the next wave of urban freedom and possibility.

Transcript

[Ilya]

I'm gonna need to get my driver's license in a couple of years. But after hearing this, I have a question, so.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Well, you may not have to get your driver's license, but it's good.

[Ilya]

That was my entire question. So.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

So much of driving now is the technology in the car, around the car. So technology is always going to be a part of the human experience. Humans will be demonstrably less safe than autonomous. And then it's going to be up to regulators to decide whether you know what a human license looks like.

[Teen Audience Member]

How does that end up affecting the next generation of drivers? Do they have to learn how to drive? And what happens in sports like race car driving?

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Mass production of these AVs is going to take some time. They are very expensive today, much more expensive than a regular car. It's just happening faster than even I expected. And I'm an optimist as it relates to technology. Is society going to adjust and can it adjust fast enough?

[Peter]

And so from my standpoint, now that's a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.

[Moderator]

All right, so go to the mics for your questions. I'm going to start with this question on slido. So what's harder? Convincing regulators that autonomous cars are safe or convincing passengers to get into one?

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

It's actually pretty easy to get passengers

[Peter]

to get into an autonomous vehicle. What we're finding is, for example, Atlanta, Austin, we let you know that you

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

have been matched with an autonomous vehicle.

[Peter]

80% of people say yes, 20% say no.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

And the 80% who say yes love the experience.

[Peter]

Regulators obviously move a little bit slower,

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

but this is a technology that I think more people are excited about than not.

[Moderator]

All right, we go to one of our teens. We have a group of 20 teens here in the room.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Very cool.

[Moderator]

Please.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

How you doing?

[Teen Audience Member]

I'm doing good. I had a quick question. Just about like in 15, 20 years when most of the cars on the road are self driving, does it ever become illegal for human drivers? Because do they become like a safety hazard risk on the road? And how does that end up affecting the next generation of drivers? Do they have to learn how to drive? And like what happens to sports like race car driving, is that like going to like die out because nobody has to drive anymore? Just that's kind of what I'm asking about.

[Peter]

Well, I think that race car driving

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

is always going to be a thing because it's just so damn cool. Again, you may be augmented. Right. It's is you think about so much of driving now. Is the technology in the car around the car. So technology is always going to be a part of the human experience. I don't think it's going to happen in the next 15 years, but certainly in the next 25 years, humans will be demonstrably less safe than autonomous drivers.

[Peter]

And then it's going to be up

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

to regulators to decide what a human license looks like. Maybe the driving test is going to be much more demanding than it is today. I like free will, so I'm like, hey, if you want to drive, that's not a problem. But I can definitely see a future where there are going to be fewer and fewer drivers on the road, just like there are less people who know how to ride a horse.

[Moderator]

Dara, thank you for that question. I'll build on that. There's a lot of deaths in the Middle east from young teenagers with fast cars. I guess I could imagine a future in which an AI overlay allows you to drive your car as fast and crazy as you want, but it knows the car's limits and it stops you from ever swerving off the road. Right. It's like bumper bumpers that you go up against. So that would be fascinating. That's just a comment. Let's go to here. Question, Mike.

[Per]

Yeah. So just a question regarding when you have the flying cars now, from a real estate perspective, what will be the opportunity here? Will you be putting on top of buildings or heliports?

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

So we're talking again, this is more joby, but there's a lot of discussion on vertiport, so to speak. And we want this product to be a mass market product. So these vertiports will have to be designed to have multiple vehicles coming, landing and taking off. The location of those vehicles is going to be based on kind of very high traffic areas. I think obviously airports or city centers or the size of cities are going to be targets, so to speak. And we've got perfect data in these

[Peter]

cities as to what are the best

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

places for you to place vertiports to

[Peter]

be able to have the most business and reduce the most amount of traffic as well.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

So there's absolutely a real estate opportunity. If you're interested. Give our Uber folks or the joby folks a call.

[Moderator]

Yeah, I think it's a huge opportunity as well for small islands that are hard to get to.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Totally.

[Moderator]

Elshin, we go to you.

[Per]

Mike 2 thank you very much, Elin. I'm building a solid shape construction materials marketplace. If you are starting marketplace now at abandoned era with AI, what would you focus on first? And we're using Uber for our LTL thank you.

[Peter]

So if we start a marketplace, what would you focus on first? Is that the question? I mean, our marketplace has always been supply led. And one of the, one of the differences, when I first came to Uber from Expedia, Expedia was very focused on building out audience. Uber has always been focused on building out the liquidity, whether it's more cars in a market, whether it's more restaurants, more retailers, etc. And if you build liquid supply, if you have product market fit, to some extent, the demand just shows up. And obviously there's always a challenge in marketplaces. How do you build both sides? But to me, put real tools in place to become kind of the easiest to use and the most liquid as it relates to supply. And then if you, if you do have product market fit, the demand will show up.

[George]

Great point.

[Per]

Thank you.

[Moderator]

Let's go to Burgundy on Mike1. Burgundy.

[Shilpi]

Hi, my name is Burgundy and I am definitely biased towards automation.

[George]

Cool.

[Shilpi]

But as a lawyer, outside of this room, everybody is just freaking out. And so my question is, given that we have this automation and sensors and having seen the data on human error for speeding, intoxication, et cetera, what are some opportunities for insurance to cover this through, for example, products liability? So we can take the human out of the equation equation and yet still give people an assurance that they're going to be covered if accidents do happen?

[Peter]

Yeah, so I think it's a great question. You know, first thing I would say is that with Uber, the professional driver is safer than the human driver and the data bears that out. But I do think that you're going to have different layers of insurance as well. So the autonomous provider will have kind of the specific insurance related to the car and they'll have to take a responsibility for the quality of their driver. And then we'll also have another insurance layer on everything else that happens so that people are covered and they can feel comfortable kind of taking an AV to wherever they're going.

[George]

By the way, there's a hidden statistic that very few people know about, which is about half the court cases, legal court cases in the US are car accident related.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Wow.

[Peter]

What is a very, very big industry.

[Shilpi]

Yeah.

[Moderator]

It's a benefit to society to get rid of that. All right. Shilpa Shilpi. Yeah, A pleasure.

[Shilpi]

Hi, I'm Shilpi. I led robotic systems at Amazon Air Hubs.

[Mark]

Cool.

[Shilpi]

I launched them and love them. And now we're building continuous biosensing technology at QuinnLabs. My question to you is, as you start moving towards multi robot type super systems. Right. Joby aircrafts working in coordination with ground vehicles, autonomous ground vehicles. I think the hardest part is the coordination and the continuous monitoring and upkeep of these multi robot type systems. And we faced a version of this at Amazon as we were managing these large robot fleets. So I'm very, very interested in your vision of this infrastructure. And what do you believe is the bottleneck to this hardware software regulatory.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

So you've kind of described exactly what we do in that we have a very, very large marketplace team that is essentially, you know, we got over 9 million drivers, probably 10 million drivers now globally.

[Peter]

And

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

in every city in which we're operating, we're constantly taking kind of the state of that city real time or as real time as we can, because we got to kind of recalculate the state of the city. And every time you hail, essentially an Uber, we are not dispatching you just the closest car, but we're actually also predicting kind of what's going to happen over the next five or six seconds and kind of getting you, connecting you with the right driver at the right time in a way that's most efficient for the overall network. So there may be another driver that's closer to you, but we think that Peter's going to hail that driver and we'll leave that driver free and we'll hail another driver to you. Our systems have to deal with human beings who are highly unpredictable and highly erratic as well in terms of their behaviors. So sometimes if a dispatch isn't going well, we'll do another dispatch, et cetera. So I'm actually kind of psyched for machines because they're much more predictable and they usually say what they're going to do.

[Peter]

One of the kind of contracts we

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

have with our human drivers is that when we dispatch a ride to them, they can accept that ride or not accept that ride. With machines again, they'll not only be predictable, but they will have kind of acceptance rates that we think are much higher than humans as well. So of course there will be a coordination problem. How do we stitch together one ride with another ride and make sure that that experience is perfect? But this is exactly what we're doing at scale, 40 million trips every single day with markets that are very, very different from each other in terms of behavior. So I'm very much looking forward to that future that you described.

[Moderator]

Nice. Let's go to mark on Mike 2 here.

[Mark]

Thank you, Peter. Dara. My moonshot is what I call affordable living as a service. Housing, food, energy, Connectivity and mobility for $250 a month. It won the X Prize Visioneering contest in October. And so it's going to be a $50 million prize to deliver this.

[Moderator]

If I could mark one of the concerns.

[Peter]

50amonth.

[Per]

Wow.

[Mark]

250amonth. And I think people in this room know it's possible, but delivering it sooner than later as a stability lever in this moment of transition is going to prevent us from having chaos. And so I want to challenge you to be a funder and a competitor in this prize.

[Peter]

Well, thank you. I will tell you the one thing that's very important to us is making sure that as we build, build out Uber in cities, our service isn't just available in the middle of cities where wealthy people live, but is available in all kind of throughout the cities and the outer boroughs, et cetera. So, you know, happy to talk in terms of the provision of transportation to a lot of these transportation deserts where you don't have mass transit available, et cetera. One of the promises of autonomous is going to be, you know, safer. Check. But then eventually autonomous will make transportation cheaper as well, and we want to make sure that that kind of cheap, affordable, safe transportation is available to everybody, regardless of where you live.

[Moderator]

Dara, the concern right now is there's a lot of fear that's mounting about the future uncertainty, all of this. Last night, we launched a future vision xPrize, asking teams to create films that envision a very positive vision of the future. So we have something to look forward to. And this idea that Mark and his team has had is about universal, basic services. So if a family doesn't know where they have a roof over the head or where food is coming from or anything, I mean, you had a disruptive childhood growing up in Iran. You can't think of anything else. And so if there is a delivery of basic fundamentals, food, water, energy, health, those sorts of things, then at least you can now think about dreaming about what do I do next with these incredible, incredible tools. So it's a direction we want to head.

[Mark]

Peter, to your point also about the bed in it, I think there's a possibility to decouple from land with housing to get to that too. So I'd love for Uber to be thinking about that.

[Moderator]

Wonderful.

[Andy]

Thank you.

[Moderator]

All right, thank you. Thank you. Let's go to Charles on Zoom. Charles.

[Charles]

So, Dara, this is going to be maybe a difficult question, but hopefully you can. You can address it. So, obviously in China, Uber's business didn't work out, and now China's expanding into the Middle east and, and, and the other emerging markets. I know you're in 70 countries and, and they, their estimate is 70% of their cost goes away with the autonomous car. Right. The, the cost of the driver. So what is your, what did you learn from your experience in, in China as an organization? And how do you plan to, you know, sort of address the Middle east and, and, and other emerging markets if they flood the market with cheap autonomous vehicles?

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Yeah, so I was absolutely.

[L]

I.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

When I joined Uber, Travis and Emil and team had already decided to exit out of China.

[Peter]

China is an unbelievably competitive market. I competed in China with Expedia, and to use a technical term, we got our asses kicked. So I can't say I disagree with that decision. I thought it was a very good decision and I think it was absolutely the right thing to do.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

We have a big stake in Didi,

[Peter]

who's the largest Chinese AV player. Sorry, rideshare player. Haven't monetized that yet.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Looking forward to that at some point.

[Peter]

We work with Chinese partners, so we work with Chinese OEMs. For example, BYD is a very, very big partner in that they provide affordable

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

electric EVs all over the world. And we still believe in EVs.

[Peter]

They are great cars. Obviously, they're better for the environment, et cetera. And in the same way, we're also working with Chinese autonomous players. So whether it's a pony or a. We ride hopefully Baidu as well. We are working with these players in

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

many markets outside of the US obviously.

[Peter]

But we believe, we think building bridges to China is the right way forward for us. And AV is going to be an industry that we think the Chinese have a lot to offer. And we're working with these Chinese partners today as we speak.

[Moderator]

Amazing. Andy, thank you.

[Andy]

Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Dara. I'm Andy from Hong Kong. We run autonomous insurance company and we insure EV and robotics.

[M]

Cool.

[Andy]

My question is that working with underwriters, are there any specific challenges or desires that you would love to work with? Actuaries or underwriters? That's number one. And the second one is, would you consider embedded insurance into autonomous vehicles as well?

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

I think the second.

[Peter]

Absolutely we would. The model is. It's a model that hasn't been figured out yet. Right. This is a very, very young industry. Is it going to be the driver? Is it going to be the platform? Will it be some kind of combination? All of that is tbd. So we'd love to talk to you about that in Terms of the challenges. The challenges, as any actuarial kind of a business, is you need the volume. Right. And right now, while autonomous is a reality today and is growing very, very quickly, it is. You know, I think last year, all of the autonomous trips in the world represented less than 1% of our growth in volume. Not just the volume that we had, but the amount of rides that we added last year. So this is, at this point, a very, very small industry. And we need the law of large numbers to start speaking to us so as to figure out how to price your. The services that you provide.

[Andy]

Yeah. Thank you. We provide the data to actuaries.

[Moderator]

Yeah.

[Andy]

It's up to Chad Wifke. Thank you.

[Moderator]

Nice.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Thank you.

[Moderator]

Ilya, one of our teens. Good to see you.

[Ilya]

So I'm going to need to get my driver's license in a couple of years, but after hearing this, I have a question, so.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Well, you may not have to get your driver's license, but it's okay.

[Ilya]

That was my entire question. So if cars are going to drive themselves and drones are going to be delivering everything, will I even need to get my driver license when I'm 16? Or will robots just do everything?

[Moderator]

Ilya, how old are you now?

[Ilya]

13.

[Moderator]

You're 13. Three years away.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Three years away. So, Ilya, I think three years from now, you will still want to get a driver's license. Because Even though these AVs are coming, mass production of these AVs is going to take some time. They are very expensive today, much more expensive than a regular car. But 10 years from now, you won't have to drive and you'll have plenty of choices. But it's kind of fun to drive, so I'd encourage you to get your license.

[Moderator]

Nice.

[George]

Ten years ago, I made two predictions. Our sons were four years old at the time. And prediction one was my son would never go to university. And prediction two is that he would never get a driver's license. I predict today that in two years, he won't need to get a driver's license. He'll just get it so he can get away from the parents. But the need won't be as much, and certainly it's going to collapse over the next year.

[Peter]

My son is 21 years old. He doesn't have a driver's license, and

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

he doesn't seem to have any intention of getting one.

[Peter]

He's got a big Uber bill, but that's okay.

[Moderator]

He's got contacts. Great question, George.

[L]

Hey, Dara. George Bandaran with Untapped Ventures. So we invest in the autonomous economy. And while myself and for our investors, it's very exciting to see this world where, you know, billions of agents and billions of all kinds of autonomous robots like the ones you're talking about. But the human concern comes up, and I love what you said earlier about how you're already thinking about it and kind of extending the kind of work that Uber is. So I wonder if you could expand on that. What are your thoughts about what role Uber might play in that as well as the rest of the ecosystem? I think in this community we talk a lot about there's going to be tens of hundreds of millions of people that are going to be out of work because of AI and robotics. It sounds like this is something you guys obviously already have thought about and certainly would be great to get Peter and Salim's thoughts on this as well, because I think it's a big problem, but I also think it's a great big opportunity for some new startups to come in and solve that. What do we do with all of this new human labor in the next 10, 20 years when this transition happens? But we'd love to.

[Peter]

Yeah, totally. So I think the first thing that I'd say is the press loves the

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

drama of machines replacing humans because it's dramatic, it's interesting, it may not be pleasant, but it certainly gets people's attention.

[Peter]

And you've got to realize that the press is like any business as well. They will tend to traumatize things to be able to earn revenue just like

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

any other business in the world. It's not a bad thing, it's not a good thing, but it's a reality.

[Peter]

The reality that we've seen historically is

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

that automation typically doesn't replace work, but it augments work.

[Peter]

If you go to a.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Probably the Chinese OEMs are the most sophisticated when you go to their factories. Yes, there's a ton of work that is automated and there are robots all over the place.

[Peter]

They're humans, and instead of doing the work, they are overseeing the robots doing the work,

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

performing kind of quality checks, et cetera. And yes, there are less humans working in that plant than there would have been 10 years ago, but there are plenty of them around.

[Peter]

So I do think that there's. And we see the same thing in terms of AI at the office as well.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Just like any other company, we're looking to automate tasks, et cetera, but usually

[Peter]

we don't get to that hundred percent automation. We'll automate 20%, we'll automate 30%, and there's plenty of work to do, so to speak. So I do think that over the next 10 years, you will see a

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

lot of augmentation of work and some replacement of work.

[Peter]

And historically our society has been able to adjust.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

And as some work has been augmented

[Peter]

or replaced, new work shows up, et cetera.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

That is my hope. As it relates to our society as well, there is a real question because singularity, et cetera, the pace of change

[Peter]

is moving so quickly.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

And the pace of change that we're

[Peter]

seeing as it relates to AI and

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

automation over the past five years is just happening faster than even I expected. I'm an optimist. As it relates to technology, I think there's an open question as to how quickly is society going to adjust. And just as it has in and historically Canada, just fast enough.

[Peter]

And so from my standpoint, if that's a question, well, what can we do

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

about it as a big flexible labor platform? And we are kind of, we are extending the kinds of jobs available so that by, you know, in 2035, we've got 20 million people on our platform versus the 10 million people on our platform now. They may be doing different kinds of tasks, but there will be plenty of work to go around on our platform.

[Peter]

And I think ultimately, whether it's retraining

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

new jobs, it'll be up to both private enterprise and public enterprise to take a lead here, to lean forward. I don't think it helps to kind of worry about this stuff because what the hell is worrying going to do to you? So my push is, let's do something about it. We as a platform are doing something about it.

[Peter]

I think Peter's push on kind of

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

labor, being able to own assets, et cetera, is another great push as well. There's no question that kind of in our capitalist society, capital is the thing that's being optimized, sometimes at the expense

[Peter]

of labor and to kind of bring

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

labor along so that they can be owners. That is a very, very positive direction that we go in.

[Peter]

And hopefully that's something else that we can talk about.

[Moderator]

I love this. Uber is the societal capacitor, being able to absorb and then and disgorge electrons as required.

[Peter]

I mean, the kind of work at Uber, it's obviously, you know, it used to be, when I grew up is like, you'd have a job for life.

[Moderator]

Yes.

[Peter]

You know, now that social contract, a lot of times you have a job for a week and move on something else.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Right.

[Moderator]

Amazing. Per.

[Per]

Thank you. My name is Per. I'm from Chile. My Family has a shipping company and part of what we transport is oil and it's gasoline and jet fuel. So my question is, do you think that EVs will push out completely the combustion engine? And how can I calculate? If you think so, how quickly will it go?

[Peter]

I think that the onset of these

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

technologies in the physical world always takes longer than the digital world. You know, you need an ecosystem to move these cars over to EVs. And based on what we see, the EVs are a better product. But the ecosystem, especially in the US in terms of charging infrastructure, etc. Is just not there yet. Which is why EVs have not kind of gone the kind of traction in the US than they have certainly in Europe. One of the benefits of AVs is that AVs are EVs and so as autonomous becomes a bigger reality in our network, our network is going to move to EVs as well. So I think 20 years from now, yeah, I don't think you're going to see too many combustion engines. But 20 years is a long way away and the world is going to be a very, very different place by then.

[Moderator]

We're going to Sagar on Mic one.

[M]

Thank you, Dara. My name is Sagar Chopra. I'm a co founder of a company called Empower Sleep. Before Empower Sleep, I was actually at Uber for about four and a half years. Very cool, focused on international expansion. And I always tell people it's one of the coolest jobs that I ever had. So always really admired your.

[Peter]

Did you work hard?

[M]

I worked very hard.

[Peter]

There you go.

[George]

Now you run the Sleep company.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[M]

There's a whole story that worked too hard. But you know, one thing I really admired about the culture, to your point, everyone ran towards the fire. Super entrepreneurial, very driven. Everyone had a lot of agency over their own decisions and it just created this magic within the company. How do you preserve that as the company grows and scales and doubles triples in size? I would love to just get your great question.

[Peter]

Yeah, listen, it's something that companies, as they scale, they all have to face and we don't get it perfect by any means.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

But the two things that I would

[Peter]

point out is one of the core values at Uber is do the right thing.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Period.

[Peter]

Okay. And that was a value that we introduced during a difficult time when you could argue we weren't doing the right thing. And at the time, most companies, when they have values, there's like the headline and then there's a description of the value with do the right Thing, the description is, period.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

I remember when we introduced the value

[Peter]

to our employees, people are like, well, what does that mean? What does do the right thing mean? What I told the team is, what it means is you are responsible for doing the right thing. Every single person in our shop is responsible, has to take that responsibility personally as far as what they're doing. And sometimes doing the right thing may be to play it safe or maybe

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

to take a risk or maybe to

[Peter]

run fast or maybe to fold your cards. You never know exactly what the right thing is. But for us, we have a culture where individuals at Uber 3, four levels down from me still can impact the direction of the entire company. And that's something that came, like, I was able to take from Travis and the culture that he built. You know, there's a lot of criticism about him, et cetera, but like, he built a culture of go getters, and I got to inherit that culture and kind of keep pushing it forward. So there is, you know, do the right thing is also a message of responsibility at all levels at the company.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

And then for me, you know, as

[Peter]

companies get larger, they tend to get more conservative. And the exact opposite should be true. You know, Peter, you were talking about when we joined the company, we, we're losing $4 billion. Like, if we made a decision and

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

we lost a billion dollars on that

[Peter]

decision, it would be a fricking disaster. You know, we cash flow, we're going to cash flow $10 billion this year. So we should be taking big bets. And while I'm not rooting for these bets to fail, some of them are going to fail. And so for me, the fight that I have all the time, and it's a fight with myself sometimes, it's my board and it's with my team, is companies tend to get more conservative as they get bigger. And the exact opposite should be true because you can take big bets at large scale and you can be just fine if they don't work out. It ain't perfect. I fight it every single day. Talk to the team about it, but they're the ones who are the doers. There's only so much I can do. Love it.

[Moderator]

Love it. We can take one last question from my deputy, son Bear over here. Bear.

[Ilya]

Hey there. So following up on that last question, I was wondering, when you run one of these huge companies, how do you decide when to pursue a new, you know, a new field rather than kind of stay conservative and continue just collecting cash flow?

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Yeah. So we, we want to make sure that we are continually experimenting. And usually when we go after a new field, the way I put it is it's got to rhyme with what we do. So if it's kind of something new

[Peter]

crazy out here, a startup is probably better equipped to do it. But if you look at the path

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

of Uber, we started with rides, and

[Peter]

then if we're going to move people

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

around, why can't we move things around? So then we went to eats. If we're going to move food around,

[Peter]

why can't we move bulk around? So we actually went and started Uber Freight. If we're going to move people on

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

the ground, why can't we move them in the air? That was elevated, et cetera.

[Peter]

So what we try to do, the

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

pattern that we find is, hey, what

[Peter]

are areas where we have some core

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

skill set that gives us a right

[Peter]

to win in this adjacency.

[Dara Khosrowshahi]

Uber AI solution has nothing to do with movement, but actually is a kind of work, flexible work opportunities that we're bringing either to our drivers or entirely new people coming onto the platform to go out and design new models or do labeling for new models or test out models, et cetera. Again, it rhymes with us because we are that platform for flexible work. So if it rhymes, I'll listen. If it doesn't rhyme, it's better for someone else to do it.