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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

#221

Post by hbn »

eigenspace wrote: post #179
hbn wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that Duolingo gives me some kind of curriculum and guides me through new concepts so I'm exposed to new words and study them for a few days at a time. But you have to be intentional with your learning to actually learn. Learning a language is hard, and Duolingo knows people will stop using their app if they challenge people too much and the app becomes a place to feel bad about how little Spanish you know. So…

Seedlang also has a curriculum design (and one that I think makes more sense). > My main wish from Duolingo is some kind of lesson I could go into that just grabs questions from old lessons with words/phrases you haven't done in a while. It's a little too easy to get into the swing of a unit where the words are fresh in your brain's cache, but having them pulled out of nowhere would makes sure you've actually got the…

I'll definitely be giving it a shot!

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

#222

Post by [deleted] »

LaundroMat wrote: post #197
joenot443 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It makes you wonder whether they use the app themselves...

[deleted]

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

#223

Post by slt2021 »

dotancohen wrote: post #61
adocomplete wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Hel…

someone will leak the system prompt for Duolingo and thats it - all their moat is just a single git leak away.

you cannot build a moat with LLMs, so there is no value in using any service that is wrapper around the chatpgt

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

#224

Post by djeastm »

I learned a foreign language as an adult, but the way I did it was by being an Army linguist who spent a year and a half in full-time training with native speakers, plus multiple re-trainings for the next five years. I have no idea how people are learning a language using an app for a few minutes a day.

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

#225

Post by nchmy »

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'm at a fairly high level in learning spanish, which mostly came from actually speaking the language and just studying the dictionary etc... Duolingo was absolutely useless - and that was 6 years ago. I can only imagine how terrible it is nowadays.

Anyway, Im responding to you because i find ChatGPT to be a FANTASTIC tutor. Like I was absolutely blown away. It can do all the translation stuff, but also answer questions about different verb tenses, conjugations, syntax etc... I'm sure that an extremely good spanish teacher would be better, but I think ChatGPT is probably better than most. And it is free.

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

#226

Post by slt2021 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #126
jrflowers wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot imagine being the CEO of a software company and proudly proclaiming that some other software — which we do not make and can easily be had very cheap or for free— is better fit for purpose than what we’ve been able to accomplish in over a decade with almost a thousand employees, and expecting that to impress investors or users or both. Like that would be like the Chipotle CEO proudly announcing that they’re f…

Chipotle already doesn't manufacture the vast majority of their ingredients. Their business consists of delivering supplier-originated ingredients to a standardized storefront in your city and consistently assembling them into a quality burrito, with small amounts of prep work for things which can't be consistently sourced locally and in-store cooking for things which must be prepared fresh. I don't know where people…

US Foods and Sysco supply most of the restaurants, literally every single restaurant food you see is just a minimum wage wrapper around US Foods/Sysco produce

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

#227

Post by pessimizer »

ccppurcell wrote: post #145

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.

> woefully old fashioned and at worst completely broken

This is the part that I'm shocked people don't notice. A young high school teacher who keeps up with the literature is going to be miles ahead of Duolingo pedagogically. One of the reasons I'm bullish on AI in language learning is that you could do fully-reactive, individualized TPRS* with AI. You could even simulate other students.

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPR_Storytelling

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

#228

Post by nchmy »

whyowhy3484939 wrote: post #20
adocomplete wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

LLMs cannot "teach you a language". They make for cool demos to show off. They can perhaps be a building block of a proper language learning experience. Then again, the only languages I actually learned - besides my mother tongue - to the point of being able to do things were English and Latin and both were very much acquired offline. I have plenty of experience with language learning apps and I'm not convinced tech…

False.

Could I ask ChatGPT to just "teach me spanish"? Surely not. But if you've got even a slight idea of what to do (learn present tense and vocab, then progressive, future and past, then some conditional, hypothetical etc...), it can be an absolutely incredible tutor.

I started using it when i was already at a pretty high level, but I'm quite certain that it would have been excellent from the very beginning. It translates, gives varied examples, explains syntax, compares verb tenses and conjugation and more.

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

#229

Post by missedthecue »

thenberlin wrote: post #119

If an LLM is what's going to teach me a new language, why would I ever pay some middleman $100-200 a year for an app wrapper? This guy doesn't seem to realize that embracing AI-first doesn't just put his employees on the chopping block, it actually suggests his whole company is unnecessary. This is what I don't think the "AI-first" business crowd understands -- in many cases, the moment you admit the humans in your o…

Literally millions of people already pay for LLM wrappers for all sorts of different products and services.

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

#230

Post by nchmy »

Genuine question:

If Duolingo was being started today by a solo developer, and they essentially just created some sort of wrapper over [insert LLM] to be a language tutor, would there be outrage? I suspect not. So, this seems to be more about getting rid of workers than it is about AI.

Would people use it? Probably, and I think it would VERY well - at least in comparison to current options. ChatGPT is a fantastic Spanish tutor (though I'm largely self-taught, through immersion). So, something that actually has some sort of structured curriculum and the LLM assesses your progress, gives guidance, explains why things are the way they are and how they compare (eg particular verb tenses and conjugations, order of words/syntax etc...), could surely be enormously useful. It probably wouldnt even be that hard to open-source some system prompts for a curriculum...

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