After 'AI-First' Promise, Duolingo CEO Admits 'I Did Not Expect the Blowback' (ft.com) 18
Last month, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn "shared on LinkedIn an email he had sent to all staff announcing Duolingo was going 'AI-first'," remembers the Financial Times.
"I did not expect the amount of blowback," he admits.... He attributes this anger to a general "anxiety" about technology replacing jobs. "I should have been more clear to the external world," he reflects on a video call from his office in Pittsburgh. "Every tech company is doing similar things [but] we were open about it...."
Since the furore, von Ahn has reassured customers that AI is not going to replace the company's workforce. There will be a "very small number of hourly contractors who are doing repetitive tasks that we no longer need", he says. "Many of these people are probably going to be offered contractor jobs for other stuff." Duolingo is still recruiting if it is satisfied the role cannot be automated. Graduates who make up half the people it hires every year "come with a different mindset" because they are using AI at university.
The thrust of the AI-first strategy, the 46-year-old says, is overhauling work processes... He wants staff to explore whether their tasks "can be entirely done by AI or with the help of AI. It's just a mind shift that people first try AI. It may be that AI doesn't actually solve the problem you're trying to solve.....that's fine." The aim is to automate repetitive tasks to free up time for more creative or strategic work.
Examples where it is making a difference include technology and illustration. Engineers will spend less time writing code. "Some of it they'll need to but we want it to be mediated by AI," von Ahn says... Similarly, designers will have more of a supervisory role, with AI helping to create artwork that fits Duolingo's "very specific style". "You no longer do the details and are more of a creative director. For the vast majority of jobs, this is what's going to happen...." [S]ocietal implications for AI, such as the ethics of stealing creators' copyright, are "a real concern". "A lot of times you don't even know how [the large language model] was trained. We should be careful." When it comes to artwork, he says Duolingo is "ensuring that the entirety of the model is trained just with our own illustrations".
"I did not expect the amount of blowback," he admits.... He attributes this anger to a general "anxiety" about technology replacing jobs. "I should have been more clear to the external world," he reflects on a video call from his office in Pittsburgh. "Every tech company is doing similar things [but] we were open about it...."
Since the furore, von Ahn has reassured customers that AI is not going to replace the company's workforce. There will be a "very small number of hourly contractors who are doing repetitive tasks that we no longer need", he says. "Many of these people are probably going to be offered contractor jobs for other stuff." Duolingo is still recruiting if it is satisfied the role cannot be automated. Graduates who make up half the people it hires every year "come with a different mindset" because they are using AI at university.
The thrust of the AI-first strategy, the 46-year-old says, is overhauling work processes... He wants staff to explore whether their tasks "can be entirely done by AI or with the help of AI. It's just a mind shift that people first try AI. It may be that AI doesn't actually solve the problem you're trying to solve.....that's fine." The aim is to automate repetitive tasks to free up time for more creative or strategic work.
Examples where it is making a difference include technology and illustration. Engineers will spend less time writing code. "Some of it they'll need to but we want it to be mediated by AI," von Ahn says... Similarly, designers will have more of a supervisory role, with AI helping to create artwork that fits Duolingo's "very specific style". "You no longer do the details and are more of a creative director. For the vast majority of jobs, this is what's going to happen...." [S]ocietal implications for AI, such as the ethics of stealing creators' copyright, are "a real concern". "A lot of times you don't even know how [the large language model] was trained. We should be careful." When it comes to artwork, he says Duolingo is "ensuring that the entirety of the model is trained just with our own illustrations".
The public does not really like AI (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The public does not really like AI (Score:4)
Most likely the technology didn't work and he's back peddling because of it.
What he was probably trying to do was a pump and dump with investors. Right now there is a bunch of Rich assholes buying up companies firing everyone and saying they're all replaced with AI and then getting a fuck ton of money coming in from investors.
Don't get me wrong this is the problem with America we have absolutely no concept of nuance. Either every job gets replaced with AI or no job gets replaced with ai.
So when everything is washed out we are probably going to have around 20 to 30% of the jobs permanently gone and we are probably going to have people forced to work 80 hours a week to make up the difference and a huge amount of permanent technological and social unemployment
But it's not going to happen all at once to everyone and everything so people can't comprehend it. Everything has to be like a light switch. Either on or off but no gradation for them to understand it and the impact.
It's more like boiling a frog. Only the frog is smart enough to jump out.
Re: (Score:2)
Most likely the technology didn't work and he's back peddling because of it.
This is probably it. AI has niche uses, but at least as it's sold to the public it's not at all what the marketing says. And what it's good at probably isn't going to get a lot of subscriptions.
It's good at some limited green field coding. You still hit a hard wall with actual environment context. MCPs claim to help solve this, but those hit a hard wall with IT Security, data sovereignty, and more. I think MS has the lead here as th
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the public likes to *use* AI for themselves. They just don't like it when business use it, or claim to use it, to eliminate jobs.
Not about the workers (Score:2)
I had been considering checking out Duolingo as a way to do something useful in my downtime. After hearing about the AI and other changes, it seems to have nothing to offer that a free online resource doesn't. Not even an owl, anymore. I liked the owl.
But yeah, if I worked there I would be not just disappointed, but enraged.
Re:Not about the workers (Score:4, Interesting)
It's actually worse than free online resources: the Duolingo Ai will mispronounce many languages (eg. Japanese, Irish). Spending your time learning the wrong way to speak a language is just awful!
At least the free resources are (generally) made by human native language speakers, and thus have correct pronunciation.
Re: (Score:2)
They might bring the owl back, but thanks to their AI, it'll have 6 toes and whinny now.
Rest assured that the only lesson he learned (Score:3)
is to keep quiet about it.
Seek first to understand, then to be heard (Score:2)
DUOLINGO is annoying (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone has a method of learning but over time we've learned classrooms with one on one teacher interaction works.
Duolingo has not learned this.
I am trilingual and tried Duolingo for 180 days. I tried free, paid, etc. It did help me learn vocabulary words NOBODY KNOWS.
Like for example, "camarero" for waiter. Sorry, the word is "mesero." Or "Boligrapho" for pen. Sorry, the word is "Plume."
There's pronounciation. Duolingo has people saying the word Yo as "Joe". No, nobody says "Joe quiero taco bell." We say "Yo."
Also there's "Elle" which Duolingo pronounced "Ejje".
That's core language stuff. Then there's the site. Many times (Android, Linux, Crome, Firefox) it wouldn't let me click on a word.
Sometimes when I had to speak it wouldn't "recognize" one word and while I repeat it perfectly (with a fluent Spanish speaker at
my side) it refused to accept it.
I don't care if they use AI (LLMs) or humans or trained monkeys. It's a piece of crap.
All that is about the language learning part. Bad vocabulary, bad pronunciation, failure to recognize, and bad website.
But the damn thing emailed me daily "reminding" me to keep my "streak" going and "my friends'" streaks. I tried to turn
it off but to no avail.
Duolingo is a piece of crap. I credit them with teaching me vocabulary words nobody else knows, filling my mailbox with
exhortations, and generally being annoying.
Can't wait for their inevitable exit from the market.
I speak three languages. I wanted to be able to converse in Spanish. Half a year later I hate them so very very much.
Re: (Score:2)
Duolingo has people saying the word Yo as "Joe". No, nobody says "Joe quiero taco bell."
There are many dialects of Spanish. Mexicans don't pronounce it that way, but Cubans do (think Al Pacino's Scarface), and also a Venezuelan that I worked with.
Re: (Score:2)
No, nobody says "Joe quiero taco bell."
Inexplicably, some people actually do...
Re: (Score:2)
I am trilingual and tried Duolingo for 180 days. I tried free, paid, etc. It did help me learn vocabulary words NOBODY KNOWS.
Like for example, "camarero" for waiter. Sorry, the word is "mesero." Or "Boligrapho" for pen. Sorry, the word is "Plume."
There's pronounciation. Duolingo has people saying the word Yo as "Joe". No, nobody says "Joe quiero taco bell." We say "Yo."
Also there's "Elle" which Duolingo pronounced "Ejje".
Aren't those regional differences?
'schools will just be for childcare' (Score:2)
He seems to be having a little memory issues about which things he said that were causing the uproar.
Reminder: It was the Duolingo CEO says there may still be schools in our AI future, but mostly just for childcare [businessinsider.com].
Uh, he's lying (Score:2)
I've been through this since 1984. I recognize the walk and the talk.
If he could, he would replace every worker except himself with AI.