I hate Duolingo and this LinkedIn Lunacy just strenghtens my (somewhat unpopular) view.
the last sentence is crazy foreshadowing
This email makes no sense.
Let me paraphrase them:
We bet on mobile and won big. AI is great. AI tutors are a thing.
Therefore we’ll get AI to understand our codebase and get it to fo stuff people did before
This isn’t “betting on” AI. This is outsourcing to AI.
You can be an AI company (theoretically) - have people make AI models that are then deployed. Note the lack of recursively, made-by-AI-for-AI products and services.
Tbh, Duolingo was always a gimmick. It doesn’t teach you a language. It teaches you small snippets of 5-10 words each with little to no grammar. It’s repetitive and boring. It was that way before the lives they said they’d never add.
They lost me as a user when they rolled out lives.
Now, I hope they lose someone else.
Duolingo has potential. But learning a language always required a large time investmant, and it always will.
I assume its lessons will only get worse than they already are.
Yai so on top of being an expert in telling all the animal names in a foreign language but not one consecutive sentence - what will come next ? More sample sentences like „the mouse eats the elephant“? (No joke had that one)
I came across “The bear is wearing its dresses”
I would rather talk with read dude to learn English than AI
AI could make Duolingo better because it doesn’t teach a language in its current state. It could explain to the user why their answer is wrong and offer exercises. But instead of doing that, they simply replace employees to save money? What a garbage company. It’s a shame their app is so popular. It gives people nothing but a false sense of learning.
It could explain to the user why their answer is wrong
FWIW that feature has existed in the premium version for about a year or so
I abandoned Duolingo 6 months ago. If that’s true, they failed to advertise that to me. In any case, with modern llms you don’t need Duolingo for that. You can ask them. You can copy-paste any article on a subject that interests you, and ask an llm to simplify it to your A1-A2 level. You can ask it to generate exercises, to explain things. Flashcards? Please, Anki is free.
When I got rid of Duo, it had removed the crowd sourced explanations and only had the super-premium support in select countries, so even if I wanted to subscribe to it, as a non-American, I couldn’t.
Mind you, I didn’t want the AI-based version because yeah. I could use Anki + ChatGPT for free.
Thanks for the heads up. Deleted my account and unistalled their app.
Can’t be good for the quality. I already get a lot of errors in my native language: the correct translation to my native language is not accepted and the “correct translation according to Duolingo” is grammatically wrong. So I keep getting errors for not using wrong grammar in my own mother language. This is going to keep getting so much worse and I have to wonder, if I’m even learning the correct grammar in the foreign language.
yeah, it’s pretty common for AI answers to feel very accurate and useful on topics the user doesn’t know much about, but highly error-prone and unreliable on topics the user is an expert in. … … …
Sure it’s wrong about my area of expertise, but I’m sure it’s right about everyone else’s!
Them: this is not about replacing employees with AI
they then proceed to explain how they will give new work to AI first instead of hiring people
Thankfully this shit service has never seen a cent from me (and I know 2 languages), and I’ll definitely keep it this way…
It was a good app ten years ago when you could use it as much as you wanted for a few short ads. Now its an ad-ridden mtxfest.
that’s the really depressing part, they took something that could have kind of revolutionized the world (imagine everyone having easy access to learning the major languages), and just snapped its neck like a defenseless kitten
I was gonna say language learning is actually one of the few AI might be useful for, but they’re not talking about making their users learn with a little AI translator having a random conversation with them; they’re replacing their workforce with AI.
Fuck. I was considering using Duo once I finish school to give myself some more options to flee the US as we dive deeper into nazism. Any good alternatives?
As someone learning Japanese
There’s no fucking way AI would be able to assist in learning a second language
Any good alternatives?
Join a class. These apps are a waste of time.
Find a personal tutor social media. Pay them money. It’s easier than it ever has been
The problem with current AI text generation is that it can be wrong, which is bad if you are trusting it with giving correct information to learn
Deepl, even though its made for translating, it is often wrong
I know I’m going to sound like a stock Marxist from the 1930s, but: AI is a means of production and therefore should be collectivized.
the devs appropriated the models from the masses.
Anki is great for flashcards with lots of community generated decks for free download:
Language Transfer on SoundCloud or Busuu if you want more of an app / exercises experience.
Language Transfer, lingodeer
What language are you trying to learn?
They already have AI driven conversations if you pay.
Which is about the extent AI could benefit a service like Duolingo. Gutting their workforce isn’t going to make it any better.
Neat. Here’s how you can delete your account: https://www.duolingo.com/help/delete-my-account-and-data
Can I delete my account if I never made an account in the first pace?
Perfect. Thank you.
Just in time for spring cleaning. Thanks.
Honestly I was thinking of removing duo before this. It’s just glorified flash cards making you memorize words associations instead of getting into how thimgs work. I still haven’t gotten the rules of how verb conjugation works in Italian. Just gonna read the books I got.
That’s a bad description of it, though. There exist flash card apps, such as Anki and Memrise, and Duolingo has many other features. Grammar, reading, speaking, those are all built-in.
Of course some people prefer to learn grammar using the old-fashioned “grammar translation” method, and you are free to do so if you want to, but on average the speed of that method is slow.
Certainly it’s a good idea to have at least two study materials, which could include Duolingo, or not, according to personal preference.
I was using Khan Academy when they went to AI. Suddenly my answers were being marked as incorrect, even though they matched the “correct” answer presented. Or they were marked incorrect becuase I used pi, when it said I could answer in terms of pi.
I’m expecting the same to happen here.
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I’m wondering which of these 2 options is true for the chief techbro who came up with this:
- They are genuinely clueless, and have never used ChatGPT for more than 5 minutes
- They know the limitations of LLMs well, but they want to ride the AI hype to inflate their company value (and maybe cut some costs by downsizing)
Yep they’re paying lip service to the employees but this message is 100% to potential investors looking to bet on the AI wave.
it being an email from their CEO is basically all the evidence needed, CEOs don’t say anything that isn’t somehow meant to increase profits.
They believe in infinite growth. They think LLMs are going to get reliable fast. LLMs have probably played a direct role in convincing them of that
For the first time ever, teaching as well as the best human tutors is within our reach.
No it fucking isn’t. The video calls are awful and don’t do anything to help you learn why what you said is wrong. Lilly just acts confused and ignores what you said. And in their normal explanations it just assumes why you didn’t know something, gives an answer for what it guessed, and doesn’t do anything else. The old explanations were much better than the new garbage they offer.
That’s pretty on point for the kind of stereotypical girl lily is supposed to be.
Opened the comments because I got stuck at this line for a bit. When I got to this part my brain added in commas and it took me a little because even though “teaching, as well as the best human tutors, is within our reach” doesn’t really make sense, it still seems less nonsensical than without the commas.
