Uber CEO compares pedestrian death to murder of Saudi journalist, saying all should be forgiven Two years ago, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was brought in to help the company recover from a long series of ethical and moral lapses. But based on an interview this week, it seems the company’s culture may be rubbing off on him more than he is impacting it. Pressed on the issue of the Saudi Arabian government’s investment in …
He then argued that everyone should be forgiven, and defended the Saudi government’s investment in Uber.
Luckily in Tempe, AZ the Über self-driving cars do not appear to have instant body-disposal devices as Saudi Arabian embassies seem to possess. I am sure that this must be an oversight to be shortly corrected.
Luckily in Tempe, AZ the Über self-driving cars do not appear to have instant body-disposal devices..
No need. Premium account holders can arrange for the body to be delivered to a disposal site of their choice. In-car services would require more downtime for cleaning things other than data, and reduce profitability.
Now, a question from CNN..
Surely the drug cartels would be the customers of those services? What with them being the ones with money, and also in need of such services?
The providers would be any poor shmuck on a minimum wage, who gets a five minute training course in biowaste disposal (which they're charged for) and has to haul the corpses in their own car, perhaps while dropping the kids off at school because taking time off to do that would otherwise eat into the pittance they're given, that is laughingly called a 'wage'.
All while the Uber execs insist that it's not the companies fault that bodies are being dumped in parks, it's instead the actions of "a few independent contractors", who had Uber stickers on their car, and on their corporate branded clothes, and on their pittance cheques, as it's certainly not the exec's fault that their algorithms gave their modern-day-serfs only a couple of minutes between corpse pickups, on a route that took them right by a public park...
"an extraordinary indication of the continued lack or morals or ethics at the ride-hailing company."
Indeed. Although Uber hasn't really given any other evidence that they've transformed into a company that operates legally and ethically, so this is not as shocking as it probably should be.
I, for one, refuse to install Uber on my devices and actively talk against people using Uber or Uber Eats. I also don't use any of the "disruptional" apps unless there is no choice e.g. getting the equivalent of a taxi in some cities in India; and even then I didn't use Uber because there were alternatives.
"But how many of us are still holding out against all of their apps?"
I don't use Uber or Lyft in my town, because the normal taxi services are superior in every way except price. I avoid using Uber when I'm out of town as well, because they're an egregiously awful company.
I don't use Uber or Lyft in my town
I don't either. Because I have a car and don't live in a major conurbation..
(And, on the very rare occasion the I use a taxi, I use a black cab since they, at least, generally know where they are going and have some sort of background checks)
Based on the replies here, some, but not enough. I used 'em once in the early days when they were handing out $20 discount cards. Not after the Travis scandal broke. And then the lies about driver earnings.
Taxis here are costly and service not great, so just avoid them where I can.
Meanwhile, anyone need a CEO? It looks like I may be partially qualified.
They've set up a German HQ here in Düsseldorf, though they also have something in Berlin, inevitably, but I can't remember seeing any driving around. There were some ads for a while.
Seeing as ordering a taxi here has for years been as difficult as dialing 33333 or 99999, it's difficult to see what they really bring to the party. And now we have the Taxi Deutschland app for location-based pick-ups. Just checked the price calculator and it's no cheaper than using a normal cab. Then again Germany doesn't have the same restrictive practices for taxis as the UK or the US do.
No, and they do have the requirement that drivers for hire (i.e. Uber drivers, as well as taxi drivers) must have a professional driving license - not a taxi license, but a driving license with extra requirements to prove you are safe to drive passengers around.
Uber were not checking that their drivers had a valid professional driving license - and without that, you can't get commercial insurance, only private insurance, which is null and void if you are using the vehicle to ferry around passengers for remuneration (you can accept, at most, recompense for their share of the petrol used on the trip, if you carry passengers privately).
The courts banned them for a while, but I haven't heard any news that they are back on the "mean streets" of Germany. But, as you say, the taxi situation is a lot different here and more tightly controlled, from a safety and fraud aspect, than in some countries, I just don't see any reason why I would ever consider an Uber ride.
In the UK, there are restrictions for taxis, which are allowed to pick people up on the street or at taxi ranks, but not so much for minicabs which have to be pre-booked. Most of them can be booked via apps, and Über's app was by no means the first. There were even some of them around 15 years ago for Windows Phone before the iPhone was a thing.
@Veti
I've never used an Uber service, and never will. The food delivery services (Uber, Deliveroo) are a frikking bane, cycling the wrong way along one way streets, onto roads from footpaths without looking, on footpaths and pedestrianised areas, and they rarely have bike lights.
The food delivery services (Uber, Deliveroo) are a frikking bane, cycling the wrong way along one way streets, onto roads from footpaths without looking, on footpaths and pedestrianised areas, and..
.. a well-placed crow-bar brings a whole new experience to 'dining out'*. Especially in & around university areas where they'd be an unlit hazard, instead of being a convenient 'meals-on-wheels' service.
*Kidding, but I guess an ethical Uber might have no-go areas for food deliveries due to cyclists meating cyclopaths or summink.. Actually, they probably don't given they probably contractually disclaim any liability for their non-employees being eaten.
He said something in the moment he truly believes, but realises now because other humans are being weird about it that he shouldn't have done and thus believes [whatever makes the mob shut up and leave you alone when they think you think this]. He is probably a stone cold psycho and assesses zero value to the life of most humans beyond their use as economic data points and the pedestrian/journo deaths likely triggered some inconvenient/unhelpful to the project/caused unnecessary publicity/in hindsight would have not ordered it done *that* way thoughts...
Why should he worry about being hacked up in an embassy? He clearly positioned himself on the right^X^X^X safe side of that issue and will have earned all the goodwill of the relevant Leadership for his troubles.
As for being run over, that's why you drive a 3 ton company limousine. Let's see who runs over whom!
stuck on railway crossings
Unlike motorbikes. Which was a Very Good Thing(TM) when I came across a barrier-less rail crossing in Germany. I wondered why all the cars were stopped..
Fortunately, the rails were at 90 degrees to my direction of travel so a hasty application of throttle didn't throw me off.
"Unlike motorbikes. Which was a Very Good Thing(TM) when I came across a barrier-less rail crossing in Germany. I wondered why all the cars were stopped.."
Did that "wonder" not include "maybe something's up, I should slow down unlit I figure out what is"? I suppose you could always have shouted SMIDSY at the train train driver.
Hello:
"Boys will be boys" plus "Money talks".
Hmmm ...
No.
That would be if the interview was of a normal one with a normal person being interviewed.
And I say this with the knowledge that normal is just a statistical term.
This one reeks of "Looks like an asshole, walks like an asshole, talks like an asshole, thinks like an asshole? Then he's undoubtedly an asshole and will always be an asshole."
O.
The amount of data collected by Facebook is several orders of magnitude greater than Uber gets.
Facebook has 15 datacenters and has spent a billion dollars on the technology. You don't make that many without the data that they need to store.
Uber, on the other hand, has not built any datacenters, and spends less than $250 million annually on hosted equipment.
It is therefor obvious that Facebook is getting more data than Uber.
Interestingly, the recently departed exec in charge of Data Centres at Uber, published, as his last post (very inflated ego!), why he was leaving and what he was going to do next.
The timing must have been good for him, because Uber had just IPO'd, so I guess he made stacks of money.
Anyway, in his LinkedIn post he waxed lyrical about all his achievements (as you do), and then boasted that he'd set up the Infrastructure Masons to support the Data Centre industry and to advance charitable efforts to increase diversity in the tech sector - one of the chief beneficiaries, he informed us, is his daughter's charity (yes, the one she set up and runs). I do marvel at all those corporate idiots who are bankrolling this flagrant nepotism, but then, the chance to hobnob with the likes of Joe Kava (Google) and Christian Belady (Microsoft) et al must be too good to pass up...
But the fact that Uber CEO’s first instinct was to defend against the murder of a journalist in order to avoid upsetting an investor, and then repeatedly failed to recognize the seriousness of the situation - calling it first a “mistake” and then a “serious mistake” - is an extraordinary indication of the continued lack or morals or ethics at the ride-hailing company..
There you go. Much better.
Sorry, neither was a mistake. Both are pre-meditated acts.
The software on the Uber car was demonstrably not ready to be tested on real roads, as was seen last week in the logs in the NTSB report. It is premeditation to take a system you know can't cope with real-life situations and put it on real roads.
As to the huge political furore around the Kashoggi murder, there isn't much more to say there, it was front page news for a couple of weeks and nearly everybody has condemned the act, you can't accidentally assassinate someone.
By my reading of the logs, the system also incorrectly estimated the object's path and thought it wasn't going to get in the way (until it was far too late).
If I had to wildly hypothesise: the repeated re-categorisation of the object screwed up it's trajectory analysis, and *that* happened because, as you said, it wasn't trained around people crossing roads away from pedestrian crossings.
That's still mind-blowingly bad planning. This is pretty much negligent homicide.
I am not trying to defend this particular person (who appears to be somewhat of a dysfunctional psychopath) but the traits themselves are no predictor of 'bad' behaviour (although the typical CEO search certainly seems to focus on those who do exhibit such behaviour).
The various traits described are certainly appropriate, but a key is whether the person can control those traits based on the situation.
Suggested reading The good Psychopath's guide to success
Clearly our self driving algorithm needs a tweak. The car stopped after striking the pedestrian.
In future Uber will strive to provide the best possible service to it's customers.
Any journey delay is of course completely unacceptable and we apologize for that unreservedly
Look out for our new upcoming sharing service for the time - pressured:
SideWalkShare (tm) where Uber and legacy pedestrains have the opportunity to share the pavement.
Clearly our self driving algorithm needs a tweak. The car stopped after striking the pedestrian.
in order to identify them and invoice them for the 8 feet they were transported by our Ubercab. Future software updates will automatically be able to deduct fares from external passenger's smartphone wallets, based on their precise trajectory and distance travelled from point of pick-up to landing.
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