Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi on self-driving's future, changing business model, job displacement

The segment opens with a short promotional montage noting a record high for Uber's stock, a gain of 100% the previous year, and the Waymo–Uber partnership, before Uber's CEO is welcomed on stage. One interviewer jokes about having been an early Uber investor, and the conversation turns quickly to autonomy, which is framed as the topic everyone wants a timeline on.

The answer describes more than 20 autonomy partners across mobility and delivery. Waymo is already operating on the Uber network in Atlanta and Austin and is called "the best of the best". Several Chinese companies that want to expand outside China are also partners. The answer says a couple of further U.S. partnerships will start operating in Texas in the second half of the year, with launches in Europe and elsewhere to follow. The rollout is described in stages: cars first run with safety drivers, the safety drivers are removed, and a "significant number of cars on the road" is expected especially going into next year.

Asked about Level 4 operators in China running with no safety driver, the answer says several are already on the road without one (the transcript garbles the names, though Pony is among them) and that Uber partners with all of them. Driving in large Chinese cities is described as complex, and these companies are said to take safety as seriously as Western firms and to have an "excellent" safety record. No safety data is given to support that judgment. The long-term argument is that autonomous vehicles can be "superhuman in terms of safety", can "save millions of lives", and, as hardware costs fall, can make on-demand mobility cheaper and available to far more people. That would make autonomy a market expander for Uber.

An interviewer brings up a public exchange on X about the differences between Elon Musk's approach and Waymo's. The answer starts by noting that the carmakers are the ones building the vehicles, so Uber is "a very, very, very interested bystander". It then names three technical differences.