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

Post by cogman10 » Mon, May 26, 2025, 7:03 PM UTC

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).

Post by whyowhy3484939 » Mon, May 26, 2025, 7:04 PM UTC

johnisgood wrote: post #41

whyowhy3484939 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Using it and being surrounded by people writing and/or speaking the language is probably the right way to learn a language. That is how I learned Polish which is really difficult. I joined a community, and 2 years later, my Polish was quite good! YMMV. After 4 weeks I also learned Spanish enough to maintain casual conversations just from trying to talk to someone online who did not speak English. I am rusty now, howe…

Post by johnisgood » Mon, May 26, 2025, 7:05 PM UTC

whyowhy3484939 wrote: post #73

johnisgood wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using it and being surrounded by people writing and/or speaking the language is probably the right way to learn a language. That is how I learned Polish which is really difficult. I joined a community, and 2 years later, my Polish was quite good! YMMV. After 4 weeks I also learned Spanish enough to maintain casual conversations just from trying to talk to someone online who did not speak English. I am rusty now, howe…

> Thoughts? On what? If I understand you correctly you learned through people and practice and community.

Post by jmward01 » Mon, May 26, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

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…

Post by cpmsmith » Mon, May 26, 2025, 7:09 PM UTC

zzzeek wrote: post #76

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…

> 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?