Uber and OpenAI announced an expansion of their partnership on Thursday, with the ride-share giant telling TechCrunch that its entire global workforce \u2014 some 30,000 people \u2014 will now be using ChatGPT Work.<\/p>\n
ChatGPT Work was introduced in July as an enterprise-focused AI agent that corporate teams could deploy for various workflows.<\/p>\n
Uber originally piloted ChatGPT Work with 1,000 employees earlier this year but has now scaled up its usage to the entire company.<\/p>\n
That earlier pilot was deployed to workers from across Uber\u2019s various departments, including finance, operations, and product. Indeed, a majority of the early adopters \u2014 some 80% \u2014 were non-engineers, Sumanth Sukumar, Uber\u2019s VP of engineering, told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey used it for a wide range of tasks: analyzing complex data from our operations to identify trends and develop recommendations; localizing training materials for different markets and languages; and building personalized interactive dashboards to manage their daily work,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Yet while the ride-share giant is now going all-in on ChatGPT, it sounds not to have settled on exactly how employees will use it. \u201cOur approach is to make powerful AI tools available across Uber while giving teams room to experiment,\u201d Sukumar said. \u201cFor example, earlier this year we paired 30 AI engineers with teams across Uber and gave them two weeks to automate key parts of their job. Those \u2018AI pods\u2019 showed us how much opportunity there is when you combine technical expertise with a deep understanding of a particular job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Uber didn\u2019t disclose how much it\u2019s spending on the new rollout of the chatbot. Instead, Sukumar said the company will track how employees use the tool. \u201cWe\u2019ll look at how employees are using the technology, the kinds of workflows they develop and how it helps them work more effectively. We\u2019ll evaluate those outcomes and use what we learn to guide how we deploy AI across the business,\u201d he said. Uber says OpenAI worked closely with the company on integrating the chatbot.<\/p>\n
OpenAI has moved quickly to scale up its enterprise business<\/a> as it competes with its chief competitor, Anthropic. Once know largely as a consumer brand, the ChatGPT creator has swiftly gained a loyal following<\/a> with business customers, while other AI companies have struggled to keep up.<\/p>\n