Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

htxt.co.za

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 348 posts

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

#201

Post by BlarfMcFlarf »

theoreticalmal wrote: post #111
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…

My Duolingo streak is 37 days and I just jumped on to do a lesson and retain my position on the leaderboard. I feel like the app itself is right on the cusp of being a valuable learning tool compared to being a silly game. I am okay with the idea of paying for “just okay” teaching if it helps me stay motivated and interested in the content. That may change in the future, I guess we’ll see!

I found that with other study options, I learn faster and get tired less quickly (since they are less “puzzle-y” and more just language learning plain).

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

#202

Post by CSMastermind »

boringg wrote: post #165
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…

CPO from Zynga is quite a red flag.

Really seems like a lot of bad people came out of that company. It's surprisingly that they're widely accepted in the industry given how terrible that company's culture seems to have been.

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

#203

Post by pjc50 »

whyowhy3484939 wrote: post #139
qgin wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duolingo is for getting to an A2 level. It’s hard for most people to get much value from trying to read a book or talk with someone unless they’re at least at A2 level

That's bad news for the millions that had to do just that and learned fine in fact better. I'm not saying you should read the Upanishads in the original, I'm saying a proper intro textbook is fine and some teacher-figure ("human") to actually use your body and read theirs. Heck, Latin even has a Latin-only method: LLPSI. "Roma in Italia est", you'll figure it out quickly enough.

Humans are (very) expensive and Duolingo is free if you can put up with the advertising.

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

#204

Post by latentsea »

gre wrote: post #117
busymom0 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> she'd at some point begun maintaining a streak just for the sake of maintaining a streak A friend of mine said the exact same thing. And then a YouTube creator I follow recently made a video where he said the exact same thing too about cancelling Duolingo because he had become more addicted to maintaining the streak than learning.

A streak where you actually learn every day makes sense to me. Missing a day and then paying money to maintain your streak doesn't. I know I missed a day, and if the streak isn't for me, then who is it for?

The thing is... when you're actually learning, the learning itself provides the dopamine hits generating a positive feedback loop to keep coming back and doing more learning.

Gamification of the streak itself means its wholly unnecessary for the app to facilitate learning to produce engagement.

Duolingo is the junk food of language learning. Always has been.

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

#205

Post by pessimizer »

qgin wrote: post #136
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…

Duolingo is for getting to an A2 level. It’s hard for most people to get much value from trying to read a book or talk with someone unless they’re at least at A2 level

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=graded+readers

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dual+language+book

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=comic+book

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

#206

Post by [deleted] »

joenot443 wrote: post #178
telchior wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I returned to Duolingo recently -- I used to use it heavily but set it aside for 2 years -- I counted 14 gamification popups in a row after my first lesson in a new language. 14! The damned popups lasted longer than the lesson had! I switched over to Busuu, which has blatantly copied some of Duolingo's mechanics but at least uses them with a modicum of restraint.

This sort of notification-barrage is a common problem in mobile apps with multiple teams and I really wish it wasn’t. I still use Facebook quite a bit and I’m consistently frustrated by how degenerate the concept of a “notification” has become. Some of the finest engineers I know work at Meta, I know it’s not a technical problem, I think it’s an organizational problem. For example… Team A ships feature X and sets the…

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by pessimizer »

zzzeek wrote: post #147
whyowhy3484939 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compa…

I suggest that they meant that the process does not involve "reading a book" or "talking to people."

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

#208

Post by baq »

techjamie wrote: post #193
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…

My girlfriend has been "learning" a language on Duolingo for about 5-6 years now, but rarely engages with her target language outside of Duolingo and some of her music library. She's been at roughly beginner level the entire time when, with proper language immersion and practice, she should realistically have a large vocab and be able to engage in casual conversation without looking up stuff. This is not the case. I'…

5 minutes per day for a year or two is about equivalent to ~2-3 weeks of traveling to your country of choice and just trying to talk with people on purpose. It’s probably easier to do in Italy than in Finland, but ultimately nothing beats just being there. Duolingo might just be enough to give you an okish on-ramp to that experience.

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

#209

Post by in_ab »

I fear AI will lead to inevitable decline in software quality. A lot of companies are going to try to replace humans with AI. And if the end result doesn't elicit backlash, more will follow. It may not fly in some domains, but a lot of people are already used to using buggy software.

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

#210

Post by watwut »

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.

Duolingo itself claims its German course goes up to B1 content, so I really do not understand why would anyone expect fluency as an outcome.

It is reasonable to expect to be a litle bit more then A2. Fluency is not.

Post reply on HN