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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

#211

Post by Archonical »

EdiX wrote: post #194
Archonical wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 speak three languages and I'm learning a fourth. Don't study grammar, ever, it's a waste of time. Grammar rules always fall into one of two categories: the ones that are so obvious that you would have learned them after two examples anyway or the ones that are too vague and complicated to be useful. For an example of the latter look up people making flowcharts for the subjunctive or for the ga/wa distinction. Or, f…

For me, it's been helpful to understand grammar in German and I don't consider it a waste of time. Your experience seems to be different and I'm glad you enjoy it that way.

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

#212

Post by watwut »

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.

As someone who had to learn languages from textbooks back when it was the only thing that existed, it was massively ineffective way of learning.

The typical outcome was a person who spent a lot of effort and still was unable to do anything useful with the language after years (reading real book, watching movie, chatting).

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

#213

Post by watwut »

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?

In most of them, you talk to people with an equally horrible accent as you have.

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

#214

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#216

Post by Sharlin »

hbn wrote: post #182
FearNotDaniel wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Duolingo maybe ten years ago to get myself up to approx A1, mid-A2 level German. Back then every new piece of grammar actually had an explanatory page that you could study before jumping in to the quiz games. As the enshittification began, they made these harder to find so that instead encountering a new linguistic concept in the quiz felt like a cruel guessing game. For beginners to German these days, I heart…

> Back then every new piece of grammar actually had an explanatory page that you could study before jumping in to the quiz games. These still exist but they're hidden in a little unlabelled button at the top right of the unit overview and I don't think they ever mentioned it to me or do any hinting to go look at them. It's silly cause they're quite useful. I guess they just want people doing the lessons (playing the…

At least it's still clearly labelled "guidebook" in the web version (which has always been better than the app in some ways). But the content is dumbed down and enshittified too. These days it just contains a couple of random phrases from the unit rather than any actual pedagogical content.

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

#217

Post by watwut »

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.

I genuinely doubt so. The app did not changed at all. And more importantly, they experiment with limiting free users more - meaning they can afford loosing users.

Duolingo was also growing - both in terms of earnings and number of employees. They can afford some looses.

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

#218

Post by cyanydeez »

next_xibalba wrote: post #141
cyanydeez wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

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

#219

Post by pessimizer »

InTheArena wrote: post #102

Anyone who doesn't think that AI is going to disrupt everything in software hasn't watched as software ate the rest of the world. this is the latest iteration.

It seems like a combination of

1) extreme denial of the possibility of change anywhere ever (which is standard middle-class anxiety - your extremely specialized skills have been devalued, and now you're poor), and

2) cynicism is safe because most things fail. Cynicism is even safer when a bunch of people are trying to sell you something, because most of them are going to be con-men.

But I think the modern machine learning methods of the past few years are as important as the computer, and we're just starting the period between the computer and the transistor, during which time we're using vacuum tubes and giant iron rings to build them. When the AI-transistor comes along, it's going to be the engine of all human technological process for the next century.

edit: if there's anything that AI is going to be really, really good at, very soon, it's going to be teaching people languages. I don't have a problem with Duolingo going to AI; it wasn't exactly great before. It's just a brand and cartoons, not a method. Being that it wasn't great before, though, I have no idea what qualifies Duolingo to come up with language-teaching AI. I don't think gamification skills transfer.

If anything, they need to be furiously hiring extremely high level, extremely expensive AI people and second-language learning academics/linguists.

Duolingo lost its purpose as an app when it figured out that creating a translation army was pointless, and it lost most of its usefulness when it froze, then deleted the forums. Now it's just a cloud of IP. They might as well start selling a soda pop.

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

#220

Post by hombre_fatal »

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'…

That's a feature, though. If she's too disinterested in making other moves like reading books or the news, then at least she still has that base Duolingo momentum that might make the move possible in the future.

People always assume the alternative to Duolingo is that everyone will start a habit of reading BBC Mundo in Spanish or something, and it's obviously not true for many if not most people. And that's fine, some people are only going to scoot by with a dilettante level of interest until they take a real plunge.

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