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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

#261

Post by flopsamjetsam »

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 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.

I found the same thing with one of the meditation apps. I was just maintaining the streak, but not getting anything from it, after about a year. I can't imagine doing that for 6 years, so hats off to your wife.

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

#262

Post by AlchemistCamp »

teekert wrote: post #80
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 daughter gave up because the mascot turned more and more scary (she’s not allowed to use the iPad that much). Any alternatives?

Not knowing what language she’s learning, it’s a bit tough to say. Many have an app with lots of reading material with audio and assistance tracking learned words, tap to dictionary lookup, etc. It’s a pretty good category and a lot of kids enjoy them.

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

#263

Post by lethologica »

eigenspace wrote: post #175
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.

Agreed. Even Seedlang was of limited use to me past a certain point, I just think it did a much better job at the same niche as Duolingo. For me as someone who has never taken actual German courses, the biggest thing that contributed to my fluency was just listening to podcasts in German non-stop. Didn't matter if I wasn't understanding anything for months and months at the start. I think the listening played a huge…

That's called Brain Soaking :)

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

#264

Post by rchaud »

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…

> 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.

Interestingly, this is indirectly mentioned in the Linkedin post: "I've always encouraged our team to embrace new technology (that’s why we originally built for mobile instead of desktop)"

"Mobile-first" anything has always been a race to the bottom for everything: attention spans, information density and nuance, target demographic. Not just with Duolingo , but also with:

- Investing (Robinhood leaning into meme stocks and "gamification")

- Gaming (Angry Birds going from $3 lifetime purchase to a pay-to-win, micro-transaction hellscape)

- And of course, the first casualty, human communication (280 characters instead of an essay or open letter.

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

#265

Post by djeastm »

zzzeek wrote: post #149
zahllos wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

In my own personal experience, the pen and paper is actually a very important tool of memory to which tapping on a phone doesn't compare.

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

#266

Post by jv22222 »

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, Facebook, Google, yada, yada. I'm not sure why, but it seems like when a vc track co. becomes a unicorn they game their own system into the ground almost every time. (no pun intended)

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

#267

Post by djeastm »

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.

I think they're going for the idea that it's an addictive mobile app engineered by a 23 billion dollar publicly-traded company ostensibly meant to help people learn but focused nowadays on extracting money as fast as possible.

It's not like it's a local school helping out students.

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

#268

Post by cgio »

vasusen wrote: post #186
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…

(disclosure: I am no longer at Coursera) When Duolingo added that viral post on Growth hacking, it caused quite a stir about the push-notifications and gamification tactics they use. Ultimately, we decided it wasn't worth it for Coursera to veer into edu-tainment. However, it is interesting to watch how much gamification works in adding and retaining users. In 2023, Duolingo's marketcap was 5x of Coursera. Now at sim…

The leverage from revenue to market cap can mean a few different things. Duolingo may be overvalued, coursera undervalued, or both. In any case, the impact of gamification on revenue would be a better indicator of its direct efficiency. The rest is just creative charts on a slide.

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

#269

Post by rchaud »

a0123 wrote: post #56
vendiddy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think AI could be a better language tutor than an average language teacher, but I don't think Duolingo's approach is very effective. The ideal AI-powered tutor would work more closely to a private language tutor. It would speak with you and gradually integrating language concepts into the conversation. When you make mistakes, it could correct you on the spot and keep track of where your strengths and weaknesses…

> I do think AI could be a better language tutor than an average language teacher, but I don't think Duolingo's approach is very effective. No offense, I can tell you're neither a linguist nor a language teacher. This is one are where the human input is invaluable and irreplaceable. Because language (the complex kind) is inherently human. It quite literally is.

A lot people on HN got their early programming chops from Stack Overflow and spotty internet tutorials, and have made the mistake of thinking that everything else can also be learned this way.

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

#270

Post by rchaud »

nchmy wrote: post #225
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 questi…

But as you yourself admit, you were at a high level already, so you know how to ask the LLM good questions. If you were a beginner with zero knowledge, you wouldn't have that advantage, so the LLM's ability to help you would be far less. How many ESL learners are asking ChatGPT when to use the past participle or present perfect tense?
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