Latest news with #TravisKalanick
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ghost kitchen delivery drivers have overrun an Echo Park neighborhood, say frustrated residents
As soon as Echo Park Eats opened on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Douglas Street in the fall of 2023, Sandy Romero said her neighborhood became overrun with delivery drivers. 'The first day that they opened business it was chaotic, unorganized and it's just such a nuisance now,' she said. Echo Park Eats is a ghost kitchen, a meal preparation hub for app-based delivery orders. It rents its kitchens to 26 different food vendors. The facility is part of CloudKitchens, led by Travis Kalanick, co-founder of Uber Technologies, which has kitchen locations across the nation including 11 in Los Angeles County. With a long list of vendors and the ease of placing an online food order, Romero said the daily influx of delivery drivers coming into her neighborhood has surged and drivers are often taking up parking spaces, idling in red zones and double parking. In an already high-density community, with seasonal traffic from Dodger stadium less than a mile away, the residents of Douglas Street say the opening of the ghost restaurant suddenly swamped the neighborhood with more people, cars, trash and crime. Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, whose district represents the neighborhood, said there is a glaring issue that is much larger than just parking and traffic safety. The ghost restaurant, which replaced a medical office, is designated as a catering business, allowing it to operate adjacent to a residential neighborhood, he said. The business phenomenon of ghost kitchens has only been around since the 2010s so there isn't an up-to-date land-use definition for them. CloudKitchens did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The facility is a nuisance "that does not belong in a residential area, especially not on a residential street," said Erika Torres, a resident of more than 30 years on Douglas Street. Torres lives two houses away from the facility's rear parking lot and is frustrated by the army of food carriers on mopeds who speed along the sidewalk, the traffic congestion on her block and the overpowering smell of oil, onions and other cooked foods permeating her home. She and other neighbors say they have heard angry confrontations between drivers trying to get in and out of the parking lot and loud music blasting in the early mornings and late at night. Several concerned neighbors asked that they not be identified citing safety concerns. Another neighbor, J.C. Arias said he suspects there is a connection between the increase in people coming into the neighborhood and an uptick in theft on the block, including stolen tools and license plates. Read more: L.A. landlord stops blasting 'Baby Shark' tune to drive off homeless following complaints An email thread created to discuss the safety issues and possible solutions to the ghost restaurant problem has as many as 90 people on it, including neighbors, Soto-Martinez's district staff and other city staff. The email chain is still active today. Soto-Martínez is presenting two possible fixes to the City Council. One possible solution is to request that city staff create a specific land-use designation for ghost kitchens while assessing how these existing facilities can affect a neighborhood. If ghost kitchens are categorized differently from other commercial operations, they might have to operate in designated industrial areas, for example. However, a change in land-use rules would likely only apply to future ghost kitchens, not to the exiting facility in Echo Park. Another solution presented by Soto-Martínez would use geofencing technology to immediately keep drivers at least 1,000 feet from the ghost kitchen, prohibiting drivers from loitering on the block while they wait to claim a delivery. The technology is currently used on Lime scooters to remotely enforce speed, parking restrictions and dead zones. Soto-Martinez is asking city staff to look into how that would apply to app-based delivery drivers. "The theory behind this is that the traffic will sort of disperse or it'll be a little more disaggregated because, right now, they're literally hanging out feet from the [facility]," he said. But some neighbors worry that the geofencing idea would not solve the problem but only force the delivery drivers to hang out in other neighborhoods. "We feel bad because we don't want to do that to anybody else," said a resident who asked not to be identified. Read more: DoorDash rolls out food delivery robots in Los Angeles Incremental changes have been adopted on Douglas to try to mitigate the traffic and other concerns, such as adding permitted parking last year and deploying more parking enforcement officers. In December 2024, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation received complaints of frequent illegal parking in the neighborhood and began weekly patrols to address the community's concerns, said Colin Sweeney, spokesperson for the department. On top of the patrols, the department deploys officers to respond to complaints or calls for service. The situation on Douglas escalated so far in February that a neighbor said a traffic enforcement officer was assaulted when trying to enforce the parking laws. Sweeney confirmed that the LAPD is investigating an "alleged attack on a traffic officer during the course of his duties on February 8" but declined to offer more details. Echo Park Eats also implemented five-minute parking on their lot in 2024, but neighbors say that has only pushed more delivery drivers to linger on the street or on the sidewalk with their mopeds. Last summer, Arias said food carriers, mostly men, parked or idled their cars and hung out under the shade of the large tree in front of his home, across the street from the ghost restaurant. The men would bring their chairs, snacks and sit under the tree until they claimed a delivery. Arias frequently asked the men to pick up their trash and move their vehicles from blocking the street. Arias was so frustrated by the loitering delivery drivers that he chopped off the branches that shaded the drivers. The drivers stopped hanging out under his tree but many simply moved to another shaded areas on Douglas Street. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Uber cofounder says AI means some consultants are in 'big trouble'
Travis Kalanick says AI will replace consultants who are just executing tasks. The Uber cofounder and former CEO joked about a future where you "push a button, get a consultant." Deloitte, EY, and others already use AI agents to automate core consulting work. Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick thinks AI is about to shake up consulting — and for "traditional" professionals, not in a good way. The former Uber CEO said consultants who mostly follow instructions or do repetitive tasks are at risk of being replaced by AI. "If you're a traditional consultant and you're just doing the thing, you're executing the thing, you're probably in some big trouble," he said on an episode of the Moonshots with Peter Diamandis podcast that aired last week. He joked about what that future of consultancy might look like: "Push a button. Get a consultant." However, Kalanick said the professionals who would come out ahead would be the ones who build tools rather than just use them. "If you are the consultant that puts the things together that replaces the consultant, maybe you got some stuff," he told the podcast, which was recorded last month. "You're going to profitable companies with competitive moats, making that moat bigger," he explained. "Making their profit bigger is probably pretty interesting from a financial point of view." Kalanick stepped down as Uber's chief executive in 2017 and now runs City Storage Systems, a company that aims to disrupt how food is made and delivered, similar to how he disrupted taxis with Uber. His comments come as the world's biggest consulting firms compete to build the best AI systems that can handle the work humans used to do. Firms like Deloitte and EY are already deploying agentic AI — software agents that can complete tasks with little human input. Deloitte's new Zora AI platform provides clients with a selection of "intelligent digital workers" or agents that can perceive, reason, and act to complete tasks autonomously, Deloitte said in a March press release. The platform has been built to act as a "digital workforce to change the way work gets done," Deloitte said. EY is rolling out 150 AI tax agents to help with tax compliance, document review, and data collection — all tasks traditionally handled by human consultants. The agentic AI platform is expected to initially be used by 80,000 workers from the firm's tax rollouts seem to be changing what some firms expect from their employees. "It is no longer acceptable at Deloitte to not take an engineering-first mindset," said Jillian Wanner, a principal at the firm, during a panel last the industry shifts, Deloitte employees need to act as "technologists and engineers first" and "consultants second," added Wanner, who helps lead AI staff development at Deloitte. And KPMG's global head of AI, David Rowlands, told Business Insider in a December interview that while "AI will have a deep transformational impact on the professional services industry," the focus isn't about replacing jobs Rowlands added firms need to move beyond one-off AI tools. "What you have to think about is having AI embedded in your operating model," he said. Read the original article on Business Insider Sign in to access your portfolio
CBS News
13-02-2025
- Automotive
- CBS News
Proposed bill aims to regulate driverless vehicles in Maryland
BALTIMORE -- Maryland lawmakers have introduced a proposed bill that would establish regulations for self-driving vehicles. Introduced on Jan. 16, HB439 would require a human to operate any vehicle over 10,000 pounds. If the bill is passed, automated vehicle manufacturers must report any incidents involving collision, traffic citations, assault, or harassment. The reports would include details on conditions, vehicle performance, and any interactions leading to incidents. Self-driving cars and safety concerns While some vehicles already have self-driving features, safety concerns have prevented the technology from being deemed ready for widespread use. In May 2024, automotive experts told CBS News MoneyWatch that self-driving cars still are not able to react in time to unexpected events presented on the road. In April 2024, the driver of an electric Ford SUV crashed into a 56-year-old Texas man driving a Honda CR-V after using Ford's blue cruise driver-assist system, according to a preliminary report released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board. There have been multiple investigations into self-driving software systems, including General Motors' Cruise, and Tesla's autopilot software. In another incident in 2018, the backup Uber driver for a self-driving vehicle was charged with negligent homicide for streaming a television show and using her phone before Uber's Volvo XC90 struck and killed a pedestrian. Economic concerns The Maryland Teamsters union has spoken out in support of the bill, saying that it would protect jobs and help ensure safety. "HB 439 is about saving good jobs from greedy tech executives who only care about profits," Sean Cedenio, President of Teamsters Joint Council 62 said. "If our elected officials in Maryland want the support of Teamsters and the voting public at large, they should stand with us as we fight to protect the middle class." In 2023, protesters in California gathered to rally against self-driving cars after the public launch of Waymo, Google's robotaxi service, CBS News reported. Concerns of autonomous vehicles impacting jobs stretch as far back as 2015 when Uber's former CEO Travis Kalanick said Uber would eventually replace all of its drivers with self-driving vehicles. In September of last year, Uber announced a partnership with Google's Waymo service, along with plans to dispatch the company's robotaxis.
