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TechCrunch: Almost no one uses AI agents to book their Uber, company says
"...Uber’s chief financial officer, Balaji Krishnamurthy, told Wall Street analysts on the call that the company handled around 320 million trips and orders across Uber and Uber Eats during the week of Halloween, but only 500 Uber Eats orders were placed by an AI agent...."
https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/04/almost-no-one-uses-ai-agents-to-book-their-uber-company-says/
@sewblue The number of startups which are "these are things my mom used to do for me" are not small.
I have to wonder if at least some of those 500 "AI agents" were actually real people who, for whatever reason or no reason, decided to place an order by making API calls directly. I would imagine that almost no one actually orders food in that way, but I would also imagine that the number is non-zero, still.
@plutarch I mean, I'd do that, lol. ORDERING FOOD VIA CLI!
ls /proc/restaurant/mexican/menu
taco
burrito
tacoplate
tostada
burria
menudospecial
burritodailyspecial
cat /proc/restaurant/mexican/menu/burritodailyspecial
burrito special
flour tortilla
carnitas
onions
medium salsa
sed 's/medium/extra hot/g' /proc/restaurant/mexican/menu/burritodailyspecial
cat /proc/restaurant/mexican/menu/burritodailyspecial > /usr/bin/restaurantordersubmit
@ai6yr And those 500 were probably done by the project staff testing their work.
@KanaMauna I was going to say, how many of those are from Uber developers 🤔
also. "hope" is a really shitty strategy for financial success.
@paul_ipv6 "Hope" is really shitty way of saying "We need to recoup the ungodly amount of money we have spent to incorporate AI agents into our ordering system" 🤭 😉 @ai6yr
500 out of 320 million isn't a lack of traction. it's statistically nonexistant.
@paul_ipv6 @ai6yr any moment now "AI" agents will take off, any moment. They will order an Uber to take their humans to the Metaverse to look at some awesome NFTs of apes.
@ai6yr What i don't get is that doing that picking your food by looking at a menu isn't exactly hard? That picking your meal is part of the fun?
The guys who design this (I mean guys) want a mommy picking their meals for them, able to cater to their special guy.