Several delivery workers started reporting (oktober 2025 am nwards in rotterdam and amsterdam) that they are stopped from getting normal orders when they near bonusses.
So when a worker nears the conpletion of a bonus the openai algorithm offers orders in another city that will ensure the bonus is impossible to reach by the worker.
Ai optimization by sabotage.
At the same time the ai demands that all orders have to be accepted to remain eligible for the bonus.
The openai-ubereats ai is trying to avoid paying workers bonus incentives.
There is no realtime feedback inside the app either. Workers receive a performance report 7 days later.
update (october 10): the disastrous ai implementation at ubereats is leading to formal/juidiciary complaints about ai use generally. Ai is not the problem: the problem is UberEATS' reckless implementation of ai.
UberEATS started an ai pilot project powered by openai in the summer of 2025.
It has resulted in a horrible and miserable experience for customers, delivery people, office personnel and restaurants.
The ai is not improving. Its only getting worse for customers, riders, office personnel: everyone.
Waiting for an hour for order pickup, together with 15 other riders because of ai rules that prohibit canceling orders by riders. Canceling the order is punished by ai so waiting is the only option. No one is in a rush to deliver when the c*nt ai makes up dumb rules.
UberEATS doesnt care about delivering meals (in 2025). The goal of UberEATS in 2025 is to prove ai can microcontrol working people. Proving ai is more important than happy customers, so the pilot project continues (as of September 26th 2025).
The ai doesnt seem to understand that routes matter. if point A and point B are in opposite ways, things will take more than 1 hour. But the ai system doesnt allow delivery people to freely pick orders, so simple orders take incredibly long, without anyone to blame: except the people that started the ai pilot project (but they simply blame the ai).
Ai Accountability
Office personnel are not being listened to (and can’t do anything). Delivery people complain but no one is listening. Customers wait for hours for their meals to arrive, but no one cares. Office personnel hear the complaints but are not allowed to do anything. They have kind of already been replaced by a crappy ai basically.
UberEATS has turned from a meal delivery company to a prove-the-ai-at-all-costs company.
Ai stock still have to prove its value: the 10 trillion investment into it since 2021. UberEATS is being used to prove it. But will it work (because its not working🚨)? What will a failed ai pilot do to stocks?
Off course, the reason is that UberEATS investors have invested a lot more into ai and their ai investment is more important than their investment in a delivery company.
UberEATS doesn’t care about delivery in 2025. It cares about ai, but its doing it the wrong way.
Ai Pilot Project at UberEATS
Problem is that the ai pilot isn’t working at all. And it was obvious from the first week.
The pilot project reveals some big problems with ai.
First: accountability. Its easy for managers and ceo’s to simply blame everything on ai. They can’t be held accountable. Its easy to shift blame to the ai.
Second: the ai is only as good as the workers that use it: c*nt people = c*nt ai. Ai is an extension of people, not a replacement. Its a tool that makes workers incredibly productive, but only if used correctly.
Ai enables microcontrol
In this ubereats ai pilot the teams at uber tried to use the ai in the most toxic way: to microcontrol and force people to work as if they get paid big bonusses, but they arent.
When support is recklessly abondoned to ai, you get chaos.
Ai enables microincentives too
The correct recipe to implement the ai pilot is off course – obviously – to use the ai to award and incentivise delivery people to earn MORE money, not less.
Uber decided to go with meth, instead of math, haha!
There are many awesome ways to use ai that actually improve delivery and not make it into the nightmare it is right now in Amsterdam & Rotterdam for delivery people, customers and office personnel.
The ai makes mistakes when calculating important metrics that determine pay. It also sends random messages. Somehow its always to the disadvantage of the riders. The above shows that the ai sends two different messages to a worker. Later the worker found out the more disadvantageous message was the most one that mattered.
The Future
Ai can and will make delivery and all other work better, because it will make it easier for people to make more money by workers in less time (because of higher productivity).
ai will make work more free and flexible and provide higher earnings. Thanks to tech, all minimum wage jobs will not be minimum wage jobs anymore and rise to very well paying jobs, because of the gain in productivity. App-based Deliverydelivery really isnt a minimum wage job.
In Amsterdam after the introduction of the ai pilot decisions were reversed to implement sane incentive bonusses that werent done by ai: so there is hope that someone at least is taking notice. However the damage is done: experienced riders left and only delivery people that are fine with doing a minimum wage job and do 1 order every 2 hours who dont care about higher bonus pay stay.
The ai pilot at uber eats in the Netherlands destroyed the productivity of delivery people and customer satisfaction along with it.
Ai will improve work but it won’t happen at UberEATS in 2025.
Microcontrol through notifications by the UberEATS Driver app in 2025 during the ai pilot project.
