So is Uber going to replace surge pricing or not?

Uber riders don't like surge pricing, but drivers do, and Uber seems to be of two minds about the subject. A top Uber engineer says the firm is working with machine learning to replace surge pricing, according to NPR. But Uber also says surge pricing is here to stay, at least until it starts using self-driving cars, as reported in TechCrunch. Are the engineer and Uber just bending meaning around the same fact? Or is Uber just trying to stay in its drivers' good graces while it presses forward with self-driving cars?