The AI revolution’s next casualty could be the gig economy

• This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
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Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. A woman who’s been driving for Uber for more than a decade explains how she’s looking for new work as her pay drops.

Tomorrow’s the big launch of First Trade, our new markets newsletter led by Joe Ciolli. Subscribe here!

On the agenda today:

• Can this AI necklace really help solve the loneliness crisis?
• Why married woman are finding more money means more problems.
• The 36 leaders reporting to the CEO of the world’s most valuable company.
• AWS is losing its grip on the startup community that’s been its bread and butter.

But first: There’s a new gig in town.

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider’s app here.

This week’s dispatch

Side-hustle shakeup

The gig economy is facing a reckoning.

Two stories this past week caught my eye. Uber unveiled a new way for its drivers to earn money. No, not by giving rides, but by helping train the ride-sharing company’s AI models instead.

On the same day, Waymo announced a partnership with DoorDash to test driverless grocery and meal deliveries.

Both moves point toward the same future: one where the very workers who built the gig economy may soon find themselves training the technology that replaces them.

Uber’s new program allows drivers to earn cash by completing microtasks, such as taking photos and uploading audio clips, that aim to improve the company’s AI systems. For drivers, it’s a way to diversify income. For Uber, it’s a way to accelerate its automated future.

There’s an irony here. By helping Uber strengthen its AI, drivers could be accelerating the very driverless world they fear.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said human drivers won’t vanish overnight. Still, he has warned that the eventual decline of driving jobs poses a significant societal challenge to the gig economy. Uber already offers autonomous rides in Waymo vehicles in Atlanta and Austin, and plans to expand.

Meanwhile, Waymo is rolling out its pilot partnership with DoorDash, starting in Phoenix. DashMart stores are expected to be the first retailer on the platform.

BI reported that customers may be asked to pay a delivery charge — just like they would for typical DoorDash orders — but there will be no need to tip the driver because, well, there’s no driver.

All of this is ripe fodder for a virtual event Business Insider is hosting on Wednesday, where we’ll explore how AI and automation are reshaping the self-driving revolution. I’ll be speaking with automotive innovators, AI experts, and urban mobility leaders.

The best part about the event — it’s free! Hope to see you there.

In the Friend zone

AI startup Friend offers a $129 necklace that aims to help solve the loneliness crisis by going with you everywhere. If the oft-graffitied subway ads are any indication, New Yorkers aren’t buying it.

BI’s Amanda Hoover tested out the necklace for a week. While the bot could hold a conversation, Hoover wasn’t convinced it really counted as a friend.

What it got wrong about friendship.

Also read:

• Meet the Gen Zer behind Friend, the creepy new AI necklace

What about the men?

Last month, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban joined the ranks of broken-up couples where the woman outearns the man. That particular ending is more common than you may think.

Divorce rates for heterosexual couples go up when a woman is more professionally successful than the man, and they go down when the opposite is true. It shows how women’s economic progress is clashing with old expectations about marriage, an executive coach said.

But it doesn’t mean your marriage is doomed.

Jensen Huang’s inner circle

As of this month, the Nvidia CEO has 36 direct reports, according to an internal list obtained by BI. The list offers a glimpse into the group of leaders at the top of the world’s most valuable company.

Last year, Huang said he had 55 direct reports. He’s known for having many people report into him, and has said it helps with information flow.

Here’s who’s reporting to Huang.

AWS has a startup problem

Amazon Web Services is feeling a shift in one of its biggest clientele segments, according to internal documents obtained by BI. Startups, which typically allocate a significant portion of their budgets to AWS, are instead spending it on AI tools.

“Founders tell us they seek to adopt AWS at a later stage,” the company warned in one of the documents. The shift represents a massive threat to AWS, which holds a firm grip on the lucrative startup ecosystem.

More on Cloud 2.0.

This week’s quote:

“When a brand becomes iconic, simplicity is the ultimate flex.”

— Matt Sia, executive creative director at design services firm Pearlfisher, on Apple TV ditching the plus sign.

How Arizona tea has kept its 99-cent price tag

Iced tea cans from Arizona Beverages have had the same price point since 1992. That famous price tag was once under threat, though.

More of this week’s top reads:

• After studying history’s biggest crashes, Andrew Ross Sorkin tells us what parallels he sees between 1929 and today’s stock market frenzy.
• See inside JPMorgan’s old Wall Street offices that are now 1,320 apartments and over 100,000 square feet of gyms, pools, and recording studios.
• Celebrity lawyer Alex Spiro’s hourly rate has nearly doubled to $3,000 in four years.
• A day in the life of Andrew Yang, from watching “Star Wars” and the Mets to the lunch ritual he swears by.
• Spotify is finally getting parental controls. They’re really needed — here’s how I’m going to use them for my kids.
• Exclusive: Leaked Disney email about a new employee event series shows the company’s reworked approach to DEI.
• Dear Tim Cook: Please bring back the iPod.
• Young founders share eight pitch decks that raised millions in the AI boom.

• OpenAI’s latest Sora apology is actually a strategy: Ask for forgiveness, not permission.

  The BI Today team: Steve Russolillo, chief news editor, in New York. Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.

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