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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

#291

Post by hintymad »

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).

> Once you reach B1, you're pretty much past the point where the vocab and grammar basics from Duolingo is useful

It drives me nuts that Duolingo's Japanese course does not explain grammar nor does it introduce new grammars fast enough. It's super boring to see です and ます most of the time, with occasional new grammar points thrown in. It's also strange that Duolingo introduces honorifics without context. This is super confusing. Who in the world would decipher a long string of characters out of a few really bland sentences?

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

#292

Post by fnordpiglet »

_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…

I have to say I think this is a to each their own type of thing. If the goal is to learn a language there’s no extra credit for your motivations or drive. There’s no uber mensch superiority between a person who leveraged gamification to practice or someone who steeled themselves with a few pages of Nietzsche before settling into a determined five hour rote study session.

I personally find the gamification of Duolingo over the top but I can’t argue it works with people it works with. My 11yo loves it and is top of their class in Spanish from bottom as a result. They’ve taught themselves a decent amount of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean along the way. I know they couldn’t have done it through sheer willpower and authenticity no matter what Kant would think of them - they’re 11 for gods sake. What parent wouldn’t be thrilled their child is becoming fluent in a language and picking up two others? Does it bother me they care about being in diamond league or not? Not in the least. If they were up selling or cross selling maybe. And I use this as a chance to talk about how insidious gamification could be if it were - or if it were in service of sucking their attention for profit ala social media and advertising.

That said, again: I get it this turns off many people. I suspect they’re totally aware of that. But for many people I’m 100% certain it helps keep their engagement over time in the skill they’re hoping to learn even if it somehow makes their success impure in the eyes of others. But for learning a language the success is in the language skill, not the process by which you acquired it.

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

#293

Post by sushid »

leoc wrote: post #173
Alex-Programs wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language-specific subreddits also have excellent advice.

The quality of advice on Reddit seems to be variable, unfortunately. Apparently https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese is full of people who've spent years doing Genki ( https://genki3.japantimes.co.jp/en/ , probably an even bigger sinkhole for money, time and enthusiasm than DuoLingo) with little to show for it who are determined to drag everyone else into the same crab-bucket, for instance. OTOH https://www.reddit.…

What do you recommend?

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

#295

Post by brailsafe »

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…

> barely even gives a token nod to the supposed mission of the company to help people learn

This was the impression I got from the app the first time I tried it, which had to be some time before 10 years ago (not that I'd suggest nobody gets any value from it, I assume mileage varies). It just seemed to reduce an inherently arduous and deliberate effort into something that was primarily easy and gratifying. There's a very lucrative market in convincing people they've learnt rather than entertained, whether it's through easily digestible YouTube videos (a trap I've fallen into) or apps that intensely use gamification elements.

There's a difference between the concept of delivering better methods of learning or easier access to good information, and delivery mechanisms that try to make it as fun as scrolling Instagram, in my mind anyway. Coursera actually has some really solid learning paths, and free university lectures are invaluable, but even those aren't effective if you don't deliberately allocate significant time and mental energy into grinding through the stuff you don't understand, and this seems just as true for languages.

So it just always seems like a false promise to me, at least beyond the premise of making it more approachable at the outset, and I guess it doesn't surprise me that things seem to be further going in a lame direction.

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

#296

Post by tonyhart7 »

rzz3 wrote: post #152
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…

So I agree they go over the top with it, _but_ I reached fluency in Spanish in about 2.5 years and Duolingo was an indispensable part of it. > if the users aren't actually becoming proficient by using the app Learning a language to fluency requires real commitment, and I’d say an app could never possibly do it on its own. One of the most key things Duolingo gave me was consistency and a lack of an excuse to constantl…

Yeah but the thing is people would stop use that if they already proficient on such language so duolingo give you a little incentive to make you as fast as possible to master language

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

#297

Post by frm88 »

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…

Side note: the linked articles are really disturbing, particularly in regards to the growing numbers of illiteracy worldwide and - absolutely astonishing for me - the extraordinarily high number of education/job requirements mismatch in Western countries (first link and then directly to OECD report). This suggests that we're doing education wrong with the US leading at 25%.

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

#299

Post by hoseja »

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…

But consider I have no will to spare and need the green owl to nag me aggressively.

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

#300

Post by lazide »

retnuhllort wrote: post #258
minimaxir wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough that the CEO had to do damage control, which is the absolute last resort for a PR disaster.

All ceos constantly do pr, and respond to media coverage. This is literally another just another day.

Sure, and X nee Twitter is just doing better and better.
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