Uber lays off 10% of customer service workers and calls others back to working in the office, citing AI

Uber lays off 10% of customer service workers and calls others back to working in the office, citing AI Uber is laying off 10% of its community operations team, citing AI. Bloomberg/Getty Images Uber is cutting customer service roles — and it says artificial intelligence is the reason.The ride-hailing company is laying off about 10% of its community operations team and asking remote employees to relocate to a city with an Uber office and work there three days a week, it said in a statement on Thursday. Bloomberg earlier reported the news.AI presents "a massive opportunity for us to accelerate output, improve quality, and scale customer solutions at pace," Megha Yethadka, Uber's vice president of global community operations, wrote in a memo to the team on Wednesday."We've made some strides, but to unlock this potential, we need an effective organization to layer AI on," Yethadka wrote. "We cannot scale frontier technology on top of fragmented processes."An Uber spokesperson said the company informed the team on Wednesday about the "structural changes we are making to simplify operations, strengthen in-person collaboration, and continue to embrace AI."The layoffs add Uber to the list of companies that have cut jobs in the name of AI. Others this year include Block, IBM, and Snap.Last month, Uber laid off a quarter of its human resources and recruitment staff. The cuts affected less than 1% of the company's 34,000-person global workforce and weren't connected to AI, Uber said at the time.CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said that Uber is slowing down hiring as it invests more in AI.Have a tip? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. Read next Alex Bitter is a senior retail reporter covering the gig economy, food, and retail. His work focuses major gig delivery and ride-hailing apps, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Walmart's Spark. He is interested in everything from what it's like to work on the apps to the companies' business strategies.Some of his recent stories feature gig workers who have been deactivated on the apps, DoorDash hiring traditional employees to make deliveries, gig workers' use of bots, and gig work expanding into new professions, such as nursing.Alex has also written about Aldi's US expansion, Starbucks' turnaround efforts, and the fallout from Kraft-Heinz's budget cutting. Convenience store chain Sheetz ended its "smile policy" after his reporting.Before joining Insider in September 2020, he wrote about consumer and retail companies for S&P Global Market Intelligence. He's a graduate of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and grew up on the Big Island.Alex lives in the Washington, DC, area, where you can find him studying ancient coins or searching for Civil War artifacts with his metal detector in his free time.Got a tip? Reach out at abitter@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (808) 854-4501. Uber ride-hailing Layoffs More Artificial Intelligence AI Artifical Intelligence Careers