Rideshare driving was the most-searched side hustle last year, garnering nearly 31,000 monthly Google searches, per a Creative Fabrica study. More than seven million people drive or deliver with Uber alone every month.
However, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview on Friday that driving for Uber is only a safe gig for the next decade. After that, autonomous vehicles, or cars that drive themselves, will take over the same routes humans drive today.
“You fast forward 15, 20 years, I think that the autonomous driver is going to be a better driver than the human driver,” Khosrowshahi told the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern at WSJ Journal House Davos. “They will have trained on lifetimes of driving that no person can, they’re not going to be distracted.”
Khosrowshahi pointed out that over a million car fatalities happen per year and that self-driving cars could make for safer trips.
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“I think the human displacement here, while it’s not something that is going to happen tomorrow, is going to happen eventually,” he said. “And it’s something we have to think about, society has to think about.”
According to researchers at the University of Central California who put together data from 2,100 accidents involving autonomous vehicles and 35,000 accidents involving human drivers, autonomous vehicles generally show more safety than human-operated vehicles in most scenarios. However, self-driving cars have five times the risk of getting into accidents when operating at dawn and dusk when compared to human-driven cars.
Khosrowshahi acknowledged the drawbacks of autonomous vehicles as they are today, stating that they currently have limited areas of origination, destination, and overall areas of operation. The upfront costs, including the cost of mapping routes, are expensive, and the hardware isn’t as advanced as it needs to be for widespread adoption.
Autonomous vehicles aren’t going to take over all at once, but instead are going to start by augmenting what humans can do over the next decade, he said. They are going to start by taking over the easier routes.
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“I think for the next 10 years you’re going to have hybrid networks of humans and machines,” Khosrowshahi said.
What autonomous vehicles mean for Uber drivers
Khosrowshahi said autonomous vehicles are making the company rethink how Uber earners can make money.
Uber started with driving services and expanded to food deliveries and shopping. Now, there’s a group labeling maps and another group helping AI companies develop their algorithms. All of these present new ways for Uber drivers to earn income.
“We are making investments in creating alternative methods of making money for our earner base,” Khosrowshahi said, adding that he wasn’t sure which will get there faster — Uber in terms of opportunity or autonomous vehicles in terms of job replacement.
According to Uber’s latest earnings report for the third quarter of 2024, released in late October, the company had 161 million monthly active platform users. Drivers and couriers earned $18.1 billion including tips during the quarter, a 14% year-over-year increase.