
Scaling Machine Learning at Uber with Michelangelo - dpandya
https://eng.uber.com/scaling-michelangelo/
======
marmaduke
I love what Uber does with machines (ML), hate what it (currently) does to
people.

We recently potted some models from Stan to Pyro (SVI on PyTorch), and it’s
been reallly exciting (except for the dark corner of poutines), it really has
the performance of something being used in production, except the occasional
nan explosion.

 _edit_ we are lazy and use our GitLab CI/CD to drive model development
iteration. It’s not as fully featured as what’s in the article but it’s a zero
effort start.

~~~
jquery
I like what Uber (currently) does to people. Gets passengers from point A to
point B efficiently while saving them significant money in the process over
alternatives. Metaphorically puts dinner on the table of hundreds of thousands
of drivers. Literally puts dinner on the table of millions (UberEats). Has a
business model that doesn't rely exposing more eyeballs to more ads,
corrupting the press, media, and privacy in the process. Reduces car ownership
and dependence. Moving towards encouraging people to ride green vehicles.
Literally saves lives (reducing DUI). Yeah, I'm okay with the Uber of 2018.*

*Disclaimer: I work at Uber, and my opinions are solely my own. We're hiring.

~~~
platz
"Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass,
and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It
means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant
Moore's Law style innovation.

And that was an unforced error, by Silicon Valley. It was in their DNA. They
didn't have to give Travis Kalanick, a guy they despised and never trusted,
for good reason—They didn't have to give him all that venture capital.

But they saw him as an expendable probe, so they cynically gave him money, to
see how much law-breaking he could get away with in the name of their
disruption activities.

That was hubris—and nemesis is well on the way."

\- NEXT17 | Bruce Sterling | Live from 2027

~~~
woolvalley
Is it Uber / gig-economy apps you don't like, or the general idea of low
income relatively unskilled labor jobs?

~~~
platz
It's the idea of companies externalizing costs onto their labor force, because
they refuse to recognize their labor force as "workers".

They avoid responsibility to communities they generate profits in, by
exporting negative externalizes at a much higher level than traditional
businesses.

Also, I don't think Uber drivers are 'unskilled'. The lowest rung is filtered
out by not being able to bring their own $20000 vehicle to participate.

~~~
jquery
Merely owning a vehicle is an odd definition of skilled labor. They actually
do a lot of community engagement (Uber now has huge operations teams all over
the world) so that point is either ignorant or outdated. And you seem to
object to the idea of independent contractors entirely (unless you can
elaborate further), which is your right, but not really a unique strike
against Uber.

~~~
UncleEntity
> Merely owning a vehicle is an odd definition of skilled labor.

Having witnessed countless uber/lyft drivers do their thing I have to agree
with your "skilled" assessment.

More on point -- my main objection is they are paying basically at cost
pricing to the "driver-partners" when you add up all the costs. Basically,
though many will disagree, all they're doing is taking the equity out of their
vehicle now instead of at resale time.

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Tickon
This is not a product, nor is it open sourced - so this is basically just a PR
stunt. Or am I missing anything??

~~~
typon
Looks like a blog post about an internal tool. Not sure why this is
interesting to people

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paulie_a
It's kinda funny they tout their usage of GPS. I use Uber on a near daily
basis and drivers by an large use Google maps. They have out right said "Uber
sucks for directions"

And if you use express pools it will always say to go the wrong side of an
intersection. I like uber because of the drivers, but their fancy technology
is flawed.

~~~
martinald
I've never seen an Uber driver not use Waze in London.

~~~
melling
I was in Colombia and South Africa last year. Those Uber drivers also used
Waze.

