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Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails

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Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails

#61

Post by dotancohen »

adocomplete wrote: post #14
90s_dev wrote: post #8

Earlier 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?

It's not stinginess, it's value. If an LLM can teach me a language, why wouldn't I go straight to the source and use GPT or Claude and customize it to my exact needs. I feel like so many AI products these days won't be around a few years from now once more people find out that all their doing is providing a slightly different UI to what you can get directly from OAI, Anthropic, Google for cheaper and better and more…

  > If an LLM can teach me a language, why wouldn't I go straight to the source and use GPT or Claude and customize it to my exact needs.
Because the "customize it" part is not trivial. That is the value add for most people who can not do that customisation themselves.

That said, I've found LLMs to be terrific if the goal is to learn the rules of language's grammar. But to actually learn to speak the language, find HelloTalk to be best, beaten by nothing other than actually sitting down with a native speaker.

Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails

#62

Post by Aurornis »

lolinder wrote: post #18

My wife quit Duolingo the week before this announcement after years of watching Duolingo prioritize attention manipulation over learning. She had a nearly 6-year streak and was on the paid version at the time, but realized that it wasn't actually helping her learn any more: she'd at some point begun maintaining a streak just for the sake of maintaining a streak. The best documentation for Duolingo's decline is this a…

I caught a random podcast with an early Duolingo employee who said all the same things: Much bragging about how they gamified their app to juice user engagement and growth, not even a feigned mention of optimizing for learning.

By now my friends who use Duolingo all know it’s a game, not a real learning experience. I think they got lucky and filled a void in the market for things people think they want (learning a new language) while avoiding the parts they dislike (the effort of learning).

It got recommended by default for years when people asked for an easy way to learn a language, but they leaned hard into the path of gamification instead of trying to improve the learning experience for those who wanted to learn.

Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails

#63

Post by retnuhllort »

lazide wrote: post #34
retnuhllort wrote: post #7

Can 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.

A lot of customers left. And, typically CEO’s say things like this to try to scare/get leverage on employees.

Like at least 500? I'm sure that will hurt.

Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails

#64

Post by BoorishBears »

lazide wrote: post #34
retnuhllort wrote: post #7

Can 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.

A lot of customers left. And, typically CEO’s say things like this to try to scare/get leverage on employees.

Not buying a lot of them left over this.

The reaction to their AI announcement doesn't feel organic at all with oceans and oceans of content creators flooding feeds with samesy half-deprecating bashes of them using AI.

I think for every person who genuinely was put off, even more either didn't care, or were using ChatGPT for language learning and would try it to see what they mean by an AI-first approach.

-

And for anyone who thinks they'd never take that kind of bad publicity on purpose: this is the brand that "killed" their beloved mascot a few months ago and similarly managed to saturate multiple channels with creators bashing them for that.

This is straight out of the "stop hiring humans" playbook.

Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails

#65

Post by lamp_book »

90s_dev wrote: post #8
godzillabrennus wrote: post #3

Their 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'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?

It’s way more about control for the free software crowd. I do get it for tools of learning personally - managing your own knowledge base is important.

Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails

#66

Post by amsilprotag »

Aurornis wrote: post #28
amsilprotag wrote: post #9

I 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 o…

A CEO has the power to do anything, but employees have the power to collectively, quietly sandbag if they don't like the leadership. I think the AI effort led to a broad disillusionment, causing an unwillingness to put extra effort into their work. Across the company, everyone starts to take the path of least resistance. The CEO senses his influence waning and becomes more accommodating to avoid further morale death spiral. So situations can arise where a CEO would like a cleaner product (no one likes to ship garbage), but has lost the political capital to make it happen.

Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails

#67

Post by zdragnar »

vinceguidry wrote: post #39
90s_dev wrote: post #8

Earlier 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?

Lol. Linus didn't pour decades of his life into Linux to save a buck. Neither did Stallman with GNU. Even if the alternatives at the time only cost $15, (hahahahahaha) free alternatives would still have been well worth making. Software freedom has never been about money, and always been about preserving public access to a software commons. You might believe your local bookstore is a better source of knowledge than yo…

I agree with your point, but your analogy doesn't hold up. There are several topics I've had to go to book stores to learn more about because my local library (and the systems they connect with) don't have any relevant materials. I make a habit of checking the library for non-fiction books first. Sometimes it pays off, but often not.

Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails

#68

Post by whyowhy3484939 »

Ah, Duolingo. What lengths people go just to avoid reading a book and talking to people. All this tech and I wonder how many people are now fluent in multiple languages compared to say a few decades ago.

This is not academic. All signs are saying we are heading in the wrong direction[1] and more tech ain't going to solve shit. Literacy rates and numerical abilities are going down the drain faster than you can say "Claude". I suggest we really, really get our acts together and stop trusting tech to solve our non-tech problems.[2]

“It is actually hard to imagine that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.” [3]

[1] https://www.oecd.org/en/about/news/press-releases/2024/12/ad...

[2] https://archive.is/zCxBl (The Atlantic: the elite college students who can't read books)

[3] https://archive.is/4k96F#selection-1989.261-1989.387 (Financial Times: are we becoming a post-literate society?)

Re: Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails

#70

Post by Treegarden »

zdragnar wrote: post #47
lolinder wrote: post #18

My wife quit Duolingo the week before this announcement after years of watching Duolingo prioritize attention manipulation over learning. She had a nearly 6-year streak and was on the paid version at the time, but realized that it wasn't actually helping her learn any more: she'd at some point begun maintaining a streak just for the sake of maintaining a streak. The best documentation for Duolingo's decline is this a…

Learning a new language to any degree of proficiency requires motivation. It's easy to start and hard to continue if you're not willing to put in the effort. There's a valid argument to be made that gamification helps to provide that motivation, but the argument doesn't hold up if the users aren't actually becoming proficient by using the app. In other words, gamification isn't inherently bad, but their motivations d…

internal motivation means that someones acts without external stimuli, their drive comes from within, its internal. External motivation means that an external stimuli is used to make someone act. I.e. a monetary reward, or validation etc. When someone is internally motivated, they can have a stable state. When external motivation is introduced, it can replace the internal motivation and will. Now what happens when you then lose the external motivation, the external stimuli again? The internal motivation is gone and this means all motivation is gone, the act stops.

On top of this, some people say motivation is cheap, discipline is what matters.

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