Uber Engineers Use 'Dara AI' Chatbot to Prep for High-Stakes Meetings

At Uber, the internal culture among engineers has taken a distinctly meta turn. In a recent interview on the "Diary of a CEO" podcast, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi revealed that some teams have built and now regularly use an AI chatbot modeled on him. The tool, informally dubbed 'Dara AI,' allows engineers to rehearse presentations by fielding questions from the digital CEO before the real meeting.

Khosrowshahi explained that presentations reaching his desk are typically highly polished after extensive preparation. The AI acts as a final practice round, helping teams anticipate the kinds of questions and scrutiny they might face. This detail was first noted by Business Insider.

The chatbot is part of a broader, rapid adoption of AI within Uber's technical ranks. According to Khosrowshahi, approximately 90% of the company's software engineers now use AI in their daily work. He estimates 30% are 'power users' who are fundamentally rethinking system architecture with these tools.

'They are manufacturing the bricks that go into the system, and they’re architects thinking about what the system should look like,' Khosrowshahi said. He described the productivity shift as unprecedented in his experience, marking a profound change in how the company's core builders operate. While publicly known for ride-hailing and delivery, Uber internally views itself as a vast codebase, with engineers as its primary architects. The 'Dara AI' experiment underscores how deeply that technical culture is embracing generative AI to refine its own processes.