In a recent interview, Uber president and chief operating officer Andrew Macdonald seemed unsure that it made sense for the company to continue to spend billions of dollars on AI tools, such as Claude coding, as there doesn’t seem to be a “link” between the rising costs of the tech and actually getting anything useful from it.
On May 22, as spotted by The Verge, Macdonald was interviewed by Rapid Response on YouTube. In the interview, the head of the massive ride-sharing and food delivery app explained that so far, there doesn’t seem to be much of a direct connection between the ever-rising costs associated with AI tech and the kinds of useful features that can make people more likely to keep using and paying for your app or service.
“That link is not there yet, right?” said Macdonald. “I think maybe implicitly there is more that is getting shipped, but it’s very hard to draw a line between one of those stats and, ‘Okay, now we’re actually producing 25 percent more useful consumer features.’ I think over the coming quarters and years, maybe that will become clearer, but I think today it’s hard, even if some of the underlying metrics are trending in a really astronomical direction.”
In April, Microsoft announced a big change to how it charged people for using GitHub Copilot, its own AI coding tool. Instead of charging a flat monthly fee, it is now going to charge users per token burn. That same month, Anthropic also changed how it charged people to use Claude, its AI coding tool and service. Like Microsoft, people and companies now have to pay based on how often and frequently they use the tool each month. This has quickly made using these AI tools—and those powered by them—much, much more expensive. Like, using these tools now could cost three times or more than it did before these changes were implemented, back when tech giants were subsidizing the costs and eating billions in losses.
“We’re going to have to start talking about token consumption and the associated cost versus headcount,” added Macdonald in the interview. “So if you’re not actually able to draw a direct line to how [many] useful features and functionality you’re shipping to your users, that trade becomes harder to justify.”
Keep in mind that it was reported by The Information, and then confirmed by the company, that Uber spent the entirety of its AI budget for 2026 in just about four months. This was because the company didn’t anticipate how many people would use it or how expensive it would be to let all of these employees have access to the tech. Uber also spent $3.4 billion on research and development of AI in 2025. In other words, the company is burning billions of dollars on AI, and the guy in charge is going on a podcast and simply shrugging and essentially saying, “I don’t know if it’s worth it yet.”
This all seems bad and likely is yet one more sign, among many, that the AI bubble is going to pop in the not-too-distant future. And when it does, a lot of very rich men who are supposedly very smart are going to look really, really dumb. And, folks, I can’t wait.
