How Daniel Melado (Uber) removed 500,000 lines of "dead code" with AI. A lesson in return on investment for every business owner.

Yesterday I was a guest at the Uber EMEA head office in Amsterdam. On an invitation from the AI Collective I got to look behind the scenes at one of the largest tech companies in the world. Uber operates on an enormous scale, but the most important lesson of the afternoon was precisely the one that matters to the level-headed Dutch business owner: AI is not only there to build on top, but above all to clear out.

Daniel Melado, Software Engineer at Uber, told an impressive story about how they put AI agents to work on the "dirty jobs": clearing out old, redundant code.

The digital pile of junk

We all know it: you build a new function into your website, you test a process in your CRM, or you connect a new tool. After a while you no longer use half of it, but it stays in your systems all the same. At Uber this got completely out of hand.

Daniel showed that 40 billion lines of code have already been generated by AI worldwide. The problem? AI currently builds far more than it removes. The result is a slower system, higher costs and more chance of errors.

AutoClean: 500,000 lines in the bin

Uber built AutoClean. Not a human programmer removing lines by hand for hours on end, but a smart AI agent that:

  • Sees which functions are no longer used.
  • Understands what can go without the whole app crashing.
  • Checks whether everything still works, via an automatic validation layer.

The result? In a short space of time 5% of their entire system was cleaned up by Daniel and his team. Fully autonomously.

What this is worth to you as a business owner

At ai-werkers we always say: we do not build science fiction, we build a(i)ssistance. Daniel Melado's lesson applies directly to small and mid-sized companies in the Netherlands:

1. Stop stacking

Use AI to simplify processes, not just to add extra tools. Clean systems run faster and cost less.

2. Clear out your data

Let AI agents clean up your CRM data and remove duplicate customer records while you sleep. That keeps your marketing effective.

3. Focus on return

Less digital ballast means lower maintenance costs and more profit at the bottom of the page. That is smart AI implementation.

My afternoon at Uber confirmed what we do at ai-werkers every day: keep the technology small and practical, so that it pays off. Or as they now know at Uber too: sometimes "deleting" is the best innovation you can manage.

Want to fix your business processes with AI as well?

Let us look at where we can take a broom to things at your company for more speed. Just get started

About the author:

Bart van Slobbe is Founder and AI Implementation Expert. He is an entrepreneurial builder with a background in Digital Factory architecture and practical AI implementation, focused on tools that work on the shop floor.