Since BI often discussed in the context of ML taking away jobs, why not perform this study on Uber drivers.
As someone who walks by Uber's new Oakland HQ regularly, it is always covered in anti-tech graffiti. Uber might gladly fund part of the research for PR reasons alone.
I work for a company that does kinda similar software stuff for vehicles - Uber has about two orders of magnitude more drivers than my company, but about three orders of magnitude more engineers - it's almost like they've got diseconomies of scale.
I think someone in Uber has some dream of creating a system where drivers are constantly kept busy and completing jobs (small deliveries, driving people, food deliveries) in an efficient, algorithmic flow that keeps downtime at a minimum, while drivers earn money and Uber earns even more money.
Uber is in a inherently interesting space, directing large numbers of people using software for stuff that happens outside of the computer.
That means that instead of solving problems that are sticky enough in the lab never-mind in the world, they can solve them with a market. For problems like who should deliver what package and how to optimize that, they can offload a lot of the intelligence to drivers.
This might have interesting implications for other products.
That’s an interesting take on Uber that I don’t think I’ve seen before.
I know Uber’s end-goal is automation such that taxi drivers aren’t necessary. What I didn’t realize is that it is route planning automation that allowed them to move from dedicated drivers to gig drivers.
Uber doesn't just make apps for phones.
They also have an entire self-driving car division (computer vision, etc), car routing, maps folks, payments, the separate driver apps, etc. A company that size and complexity has plenty of work for engineers.
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