Uber lays off 10 percent of customer service staff as it doubles down on AI

Uber announced layoffs of roughly 10 percent of its customer service staff as it keeps shifting request handling to artificial intelligence. Routine queries — ride status, refunds, standard glitches — are already resolved by algorithms faster and cheaper than by operators, and the headcount is being reshaped around that reality.

No one needs Uber's scale to borrow the economics: in any support operation the bulk of the volume is repetitive questions, and those are exactly what AI removes best. The working pattern is not "replace everyone" but splitting the flow: automation closes the routine while people keep the complex and contentious cases where experience and empathy decide.

Inside a company the same move saves just as much as it does with customers. Employee questions — "what's the balance on this contract", "where's last month's act", "who approves the discount" — are the same routine support, just for your own staff. At 1Cifer an AI agent takes this over right inside Telegram or WhatsApp: an employee asks in a familiar messenger and gets an answer from company data without tugging at accounting or the boss.