Three years ago, Colgate Palmoliv’s chief supply chain officer Luciano Sieber coordinated the “Logistics Blitz” as the pandemic caused disruptions for businesses large and small.
As a result, Seaver has a better understanding of how Colgate Palmolive works its products around the world. But it pasted another issue, Sieber: Too much data.
About a year ago, Seaber says he found a solution to his Uber freight problem. The long-term logistics and analytics department of ride services is developing new ways to narrow down large amounts of data using artificial intelligence. Colgate-Palmolive has become one of the first companies to call Insights AI, one of the latest products, logistics-centric LLM Uber freight.
Now, Uber Freight is more officially launching a suite of AI capabilities to shippers around the world as part of its existing supply chain software. This includes the expansion of Insights AI, which quietly launched Uber’s cargo in 2023, and more than 30 AI agents built to “perform key logistics tasks throughout the cargo lifecycle.”
Uber’s freight isn’t just about taming an unruly supply chain with the latest artificial intelligence tools. FlexPort unveiled its own suite of AI tools in February. There are also countless startups that try to help businesses strangle data, reduce inventory stockpiles, and better forecast supply and demand.
However, Uber Freight bets that its AI solution could immediately affect the revenues of both Blue Chip customers and the nearly 10,000 other shippers on which it works. It is mainly due to the knowledge base and relationships established over the eight years since it was created to match long-distance truck drivers and shippers.
“The supply chain is essentially a data-rich problem. It’s complicated, subtle, and AI can serve the fundamental role of shaping and accelerating it,” Uber Freight founder Lior Ron said in an interview with TechCrunch.
“We’ve been building for this moment.”
When Uber’s freight began in 2017, it began as a simpler brokerage business model. However, Uber’s subsidiary has steadily evolved over the years into service providers for companies that ship products around the world.
Many modern companies are trying to find ways to incorporate artificial intelligence (often by mixing the results). It’s no surprise that Uber’s cargo puts technology at the forefront and center. After all, both Ron’s undergraduate course and his master paper joked, “it goes back to the dark ages that were known as “neural networks.”
Ron continued to operate machine learning technology while running Google Maps from 2007 to 2016. He said he saw the “possibility of digitizing the physical universe.”
“That kind of thing was led nine years ago by the fundamental belief that supply chains were essentially a data-first technology-first challenge, and that data connectivity and the potential to accelerate over time,” he said. “We’ve been building towards this moment, I think since I started with Uber cargo.”
Ron said Uber’s freight uses machine learning in its work from the start. However, it was about two years ago that teams began to try to deal with more advanced generation AI features.
It was “not an easy road,” Ron said. The first attempt to build a sort of “logistics co-pilot” of Uber Freight was plagued by hallucinations, with accurate responses being returned only about 60% to 70% of the time.
The technology is currently being “combat tested” and “facilitates actual business outcomes”, with an accuracy rate of 98%, according to Ron. The company says the Insight AI model is trained on internal and external data related to $20 billion worth of cargo that helps move each year. According to Uber Freight, it also makes use of multiple private AI models to “provide the best combination of price, accuracy and performance.”
Ron said the AI push will create new ways for customers to manipulate data related to their supply chain. They can ask Insight AI to quickly raise the worst starting point for a particular shipment. Alternatively, you can ask to show “All shipments to CVS in 2023”. Ron emphasized that queries could also be much more complicated than this, and that the model will always be maintained.
Insights AI is presented to customers just like any other popular LLM interface. And, like any other inference model, it shows the work and makes it clear where all the data comes from.
All of this will allow customers to “get insights about their network faster, immediately with nearly 100% accuracy, to formulate what they want to know, send it to some analysts and wait for the PowerPoint presentation to return and have a discussion,” Ron said.
“What do you want to know?”
Uber Freight works with many Fortune 500 companies, but has been particularly happy to find a partner to try out Colgate-Palmolive’s AI and other new tools. According to Sieber, the conglomerate has already made the suite of AI models available to all employees. These workers also receive essential training in AI ethics developed in-house.
“I think it’s great because it turns from fear to “the way it makes me more efficient and how to become a better professional and become more professional by using those new technologies,” Sheeber said.
For example, Seaver said his company used Insight AI to easily identify carriers accepting less cargo than they have contractual obligations. From there, they can solve the reasons why these levels are low and come up with solutions to bring the carrier back to compliance, or drop in favor of another carrier.
This was previously a challenge to solve in real time, Sheeber said. Each of them could work with different systems and workflows, and as a result, all the resulting information was not actually centrally managed.
According to Sieber and Ron, the next step with AI is finding ways to create a more proactive solution. Ron said this is another place where Uber’s cargo can bend its data strength. “We know the facilities, we know the lanes, we know the prices,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
These more aggressive integrations come in the form of alerts that tell customers like Colgate-Palmolive that they are overpaid on certain routes or that there are faster options available for certain shipping.
Such a single proposal can save only hundreds, or perhaps thousands of dollars. However, it can make a huge difference as it is consolidated across the entire network.
So, Seaver quickly replied that Colgate Palmoliv’s Chief Financial Officer is the executive most pleased with the enablement of Uber Freight. “He loves to see logistics costs drop,” Sieber laughed.