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Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails
21–30 of 348 posts
Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails
#22Their comments cemented to me that they have no long term value. If the ceo of Duolingo thinks AI will teach me a language then I’ll use a low cost LLM to get there without Duolingo.
Ouch, this is so logically true given the CEO's previous statement. Even if it isn't in fact true.
However the stock did rise about 25% after his comment so maybe it was at least working for the short term if some investor wanted to cash out?
Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails
#23[flagged]
I take issue with assuming that based on his name alone. Is there a wealthy von Ahn family I’m not aware of? If there is, having that name doesn’t mean you are part of that family.
Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails
#24Their comments cemented to me that they have no long term value. If the ceo of Duolingo thinks AI will teach me a language then I’ll use a low cost LLM to get there without Duolingo.
I do think AI could be a better language tutor than an average language teacher, but I don't think Duolingo's approach is very effective.
The ideal AI-powered tutor would work more closely to a private language tutor. It would speak with you and gradually integrating language concepts into the conversation. When you make mistakes, it could correct you on the spot and keep track of where your strengths and weaknesses are.
Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails
#25im re-visiting learning Spanish in my spare time and am working with Babbel, LingoDeer and a pretty good independent site morpheem (https://morpheem.org/) that has the heaviest use of AI of all three. I didn't even consider duolingo as LingoDeer is generally better in the "cutesy gamified language learning" space.
Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails
#26[flagged]
How progressive of you to make assumptions based off a fucking name
Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've noticed that a strong thread of the hacker community, including HN and the guys who wrote GNU and linux, are extremely cheap . Like, you'd rather write a product clone yourself than pay $15/month for the official product. Why is this? What's with the inherent stinginess?
If you enjoy building things why not do it yourself while also saving money? My dad likes doing oil changes himself which I'd never do, but it doesn't occur to me to insult and question why a person has different values than I do.
Well, or as many DIY’ers have figured out - ‘why would I buy that for $500 when I can spend $1500 and 3 weeks making it myself?’
Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails
#28I stopped using duolingo regularly about a month ago. It's wonderful that Luis von Ahn says in interviews that he tries to prevent teams from cluttering the app, but it seems like he lost the battle. You can get 10+ pop-ups after a lesson. The friend feed is cluttered with meaningless achievements. The web app is tolerable, but the phone experience is miserable. But if you're behind a computer and keyboard, there are…
> It's wonderful that Luis von Ahn says in interviews that he tries to prevent teams from cluttering the app, but it seems like he lost the battle.
This is classic PR spin. Do one thing, publicly say you’re not doing it. Try to get the benefit of good intentions while doing the opposite.
The CEO doesn’t lose any battles with the product managers. He could reverse the changes in a matter of days by calling a meeting or sending an email.
What’s actually happening here is they Product Managers are responding to what gets rewarded at the company, which ultimately comes from the CEO.
Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails
#29I was happily paying for Duolingo Super, despite being unconfident in its pedagogy, until they announced they were replacing their human curriculum writers. Dropped it instantly. I get the bargain-basement cost-cutting appeal from a (bad) CEO's perspective, but if I'm paying actual money for a service, I want said money going to humans.
The value proposition gets even more dicey if the target language is one with a sizable online learning community. Those are churning out more tools and instructional content every day, most of which are made freely available, and this content has the benefit of not only being made by humans but also by people who are passionate about the language who care about the small details. These communities are much quicker to embrace experimental learning methods, too, and so generally the stuff that doesn’t work gets filtered out in short order.
And as others in these comments note, if one wants to use an LLM as a language tutor, you can do that for less than what Duolingo is charging while also getting the benefit of being able to tune it to your exact needs instead of being stuck with whatever Duolingo decided is best.
Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails
#30Can someone explain the point of this article? How does any of this matter unless 1. customers stop using this app or 2. all employees quit. Neither one is happening, especially the one where customers leave, because customers are not using this app as a form of charity to fund salaries of contractors.
There's a group of news readers who dislike CEO's and dislike AI. Many of these people have also heard of Duolingo. "CEO of [company you've heard of] makes an AI mistake" is a surefire way to get clicks.