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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

#141

Post by next_xibalba »

cyanydeez wrote: post #100
whyowhy3484939 wrote: post #68

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 "Cl…

good thing most of the people driving techno fascism dont news to meet those street people

Duolingo is techno fascism?

I looked up the definition as:

> authoritarian rule, often involving the fusion of state and corporate tech power, where technology is seen as the driving force of the regime and used to consolidate control, suppress dissent, and erode public trust.

I’m trying to connect the dots between the above and Duolingo.

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

#142

Post by verisimilidude »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #115
zdragnar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I disagree with this in principle. Gamification is something we should be very wary of because it is inherently bad. It reduces what you care about in an activity to points and a progress bar. Instead of sticking with language learning because you have some intrinsic reason to want to learn it (or even a external one such as wanting a new job) you're substituting that with whatever Duolingo puts for their gamificatio…

If the gamification is fully disclosed, I don't see the problem. People should be able to agree to game themselves, if it helps them complete a task they otherwise wouldn't finish.

But consent is key. Maybe we need regulation that compels companies to disclose these manipulative techniques in digital services. Give people the chance to opt in or out.

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

#143

Post by zahllos »

zzzeek wrote: post #76
whyowhy3484939 wrote: post #68

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 "Cl…

> What lengths people go just to avoid reading a book and talking to people. odd take, do you have the same negative sentiment for the entire field of language instruction? introductory German class at a local college? 7th grade French ? things like that?

I don't think it is an odd take. I live in Switzerland, which has 4 national languages (Swiss German is spoken in dialect form that varies between towns, while Romansh has well-defined idioms with distinct spelling, although the 5 or so idioms are mutually intelligible). I speak French, passable German and one of the Romanshes, and I'm a native of none of them. Between French and Romansh I can more or less read Italian, although I can't understand it when spoken.

The same thing that has worked for me as a method for learning languages has always been the same. Get books, particularly short stories or children's stories aimed at A2/B1 level, and read them. Practice grammar. Get a pen and paper and learn vocab by repeatedly writing it down. Boring but effective. And of course practice listening and talking, which means either having native friends, doing a course, using audio materials from somewhere, etc. Courses with actual humans make learning go faster (in the case of Romansh, it would have been impossible without the course).

I don't find duolingo to be effective at all, as others mention beyond the A1/A2 level. I'd be a bit more skeptical and say even A2 you need to expand your horizons.

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

#144

Post by jimbob45 »

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…

Hot damn six years is no joke. Is she fluent in any of the languages she’s attempted to learn?

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

#145

Post by ccppurcell »

It is my informed opinion as an educator, most recently in English as a second language, and as a language learner that duolingo is at best woefully old fashioned and at worst completely broken, pedagogically speaking. It's high time the owl fell from its high perch.

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

#146

Post by leoc »

Sanzig wrote: post #46
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…

Duolingo is really only useful at the A1/A2 levels anyway. Once you reach B1, you're pretty much past the point where the vocab and grammar basics from Duolingo is useful and you need to move on to other activities (watching TV in your target language, having conversations with native speakers, reading books in your target language, etc).

Even at those levels there doesn't seem to be any reason why you wouldn't be better off putting your time into Dreaming Spanish https://www.dreamingspanish.com/ or Muzzy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzy_in_Gondoland , just to name some famously approachable beginner material.

To be a bit cynical about it: the typical DuoLingo player has probably been misled to some extent about its effectiveness, yes, but also many of them don't particularly want to learn a new language. I suspect that they're happy to be able to play a popular mobile game that everyone else is also playing without the stigma of being a "Candy Crush addict" and "timewaster". "I'm learning a language!" is the welcome figleaf. https://youtu.be/F3SzNuEGmwQ?t=243

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

#147

Post by zzzeek »

whyowhy3484939 wrote: post #78
zzzeek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What lengths people go just to avoid reading a book and talking to people. odd take, do you have the same negative sentiment for the entire field of language instruction? introductory German class at a local college? 7th grade French ? things like that?

What introductory German class does not use books and does not talk to people?

oh, so you only mean like the gamified nature of duolingo? Lots of language apps have lessons that are interactive versions of language books and they also include conversational practice with language models. Conversational practice with humans is not necessarily easily available nor is it that appropriate if you are just learning a language and can't have simple conversations yet. Babbel for example is pretty comparable to a traditional language class in how it's structured. It's pretty convenient that I can use it any time of day and as often as I want, from my car or whatever.

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

#148

Post by zer00eyz »

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…

This is a theme for Duolingo... and they have been overt about it for a long time (first vid is a ted talk from a year ago!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6FORpg0KVo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0UE2ZY3QB0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUsDbgGQmIM

(As an aside I hate that videos are now "source material" for a discussion... it feels somewhat lame).

> wife began to complain about Duolingo feeling more and more manipulative and less and less useful.

I think this is a great bit of insight into what a lot of what the web has become! If they had been more manipulative and stepped up the quality and utility of the product would that have been acceptable to remain competitive vs something like tiktok?

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

#149

Post by zzzeek »

zahllos wrote: post #143
zzzeek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What lengths people go just to avoid reading a book and talking to people. odd take, do you have the same negative sentiment for the entire field of language instruction? introductory German class at a local college? 7th grade French ? things like that?

I don't think it is an odd take. I live in Switzerland, which has 4 national languages (Swiss German is spoken in dialect form that varies between towns, while Romansh has well-defined idioms with distinct spelling, although the 5 or so idioms are mutually intelligible). I speak French, passable German and one of the Romanshes, and I'm a native of none of them. Between French and Romansh I can more or less read Itali…

So I think people who grew up in Europe surrounded by many languages have a huge language learning advantage over mono-lingual Americans. Also exercises like "get a pen and paper and learn vocab by repeatedly writing it down" this is exactly what language applications have you do, just minus the pen and paper. (I'm not a young person so I have deep familiarity with pens and paper)

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

#150

Post by tetris11 »

Archonical wrote: post #124
eigenspace wrote: post #110

For me, the problem with Duolingo has always been that the content is just too lowest-common-denominator, and this will just bring it down even lower. I switched a while ago to Seedlang ( https://www.seedlang.com/ ), and while it only supports French, German, and Spanish, I can at least say that the German course is everything I actually wanted from Duolingo. Every exercise involves a real video of a real German spea…

I studied German for 3 years in university, dabbled in German duo-lingo, and completed all German courses on Memrise. I don't see how one can learn German fluently using Duolingo (or even Memrise, which I think is much better). It's great for vocabulary, but I think understanding the grammar requires understanding the theory which I didn't see when I used these applications.

I did every German module on Duolingo in a 5-month preparation for moving to Germany for my job, and I got the coveted Golden Owl to prove my proficiency...

... only for me to get to Germany and realise very early on that I would need to do a basic A1 language course.

The app was gibberish; the pronunciations were wrong, the genders were misleading, and the daily interactions they tried to drill in me were far from useful.

The overinflated proficiency instilled in me by the app, made me genuinely believe I could interact easily with a German - a delusion I was quickly and painfully made aware of, much to my chagrin.

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