[HN Gopher] Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI
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Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI
Author : donohoe
Score : 103 points
Date : 2025-04-29 01:46 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| ChessviaAI wrote:
| It feels like we're watching the playbook for AI-native companies
| emerge in real time.
|
| Duolingo's approach, explicitly tying headcount to proof-of-
| automation limits, baking AI usage into performance reviews, and
| prioritizing AI-first systems over retrofitting old workflows, is
| a glimpse at how "AI-first" won't just mean using LLMs as a tool,
| but rebuilding the entire operational model around them.
|
| That said, it's a double-edged sword. Contract workers were
| crucial to Duolingo's early scalability. Shifting to AI removes
| human bottlenecks, but also human nuance -- and teaching language
| is deeply nuanced. It'll be fascinating (and maybe a little
| uncomfortable) to see if mass AI content keeps Duolingo's
| educational quality high as they chase faster scaling.
|
| AI-first might win on cost and speed. But will it still win on
| outcomes?
| krackers wrote:
| >Duolingo's educational quality high
|
| Was duolingo ever known for high educational quality? To me
| duolingo's main pitch was a way to gamify language learning. Of
| course it became a victim of its own success as soon as you
| could "pay to win".
| npinsker wrote:
| I don't think so. I see its pitch as "the best kind of
| exercise is the one you do", maybe preferable to playing a
| game, but not an efficient way to learn. How useful it is to
| you will probably depend on how effective the sounds and
| streaks and home screen notification stuff is for keeping you
| motivated. Personally, I'm motivated by quick progress and
| outcomes (streaks don't do anything for me), so Anki is
| actually stickier, though I must be in the minority.
|
| Because they focus so much on beginning learners for whom
| nuance isn't important, this change doesn't seem like it'll
| hurt them.
| morkalork wrote:
| Being successful at Duolingo was always being like that guy
| who wins scrabble tournaments in French and Spanish without
| being able to converse in them. It's just a game and
| winning at it doesn't necessarily align with being
| functional in it. Otherwise second language schools would
| have long been extinct by now.
| nicce wrote:
| Far behind are the days when free version of Duolingo was
| playable. There are so many dark patterns these days to keep
| users coming back, gatekeeping something or otherwise to just
| push them to pay for the usage.
| gs17 wrote:
| I don't think it was ever known for being high quality, it
| was known for being "accessible" and then they forgot about
| what their original goals were. They got pretty disappointing
| IMO when real languages were in need of updates for a long
| time (I don't know if the Chinese course ever got features
| like Stories) while they added a bunch of fictional
| languages.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > keeps Duolingo's educational quality high as they chase
| faster scaling
|
| Duolingo is widely regarded as more of a game than a high-
| quality learning experience. People obvious learn something
| from it, but it's a running joke almost everywhere on social
| media that people can be 100s of days into their Duolingo
| streak and still not learn much.
|
| Getting people off of Duolingo and onto less gamified, more
| rigorous language learning courses is a common theme in the
| language learning world.
| j_bum wrote:
| Any resources you'd recommend?
|
| I haven't used Duolingo in over a decade, but recently I've
| become interested in learning conversational Spanish.
| secstate wrote:
| Language Transfer
| deckiedan wrote:
| Massive plus one for Language Transfer. It's well
| presented, interesting, and kept me engaged. The whole
| concept is finding connections to language you already
| know, and gets you thinking in fuller more complex
| thoughts and sentences really quickly. The audio lessons
| are free on various podcast platforms / YouTube etc.
| dbbk wrote:
| They even explicitly admit to this. In the recent Decoder
| podcast the CEO said they will always choose engagement and
| gamification over teaching you the 'best' way.
|
| Which is not a terrible strategy. Most people learning
| languages are doing it for fun or a new years resolution or
| whatever. If you're serious about learning a language for
| real (ie you've moved country) then of course you're gonna go
| to a more serious platform.
| Zanfa wrote:
| > AI-first might win on cost and speed. But will it still win
| on outcomes?
|
| It will be a flop. Either it won't get implemented like the
| C-levels dreamed in the first place and will remain policy on
| paper only or it will be rolled back quietly once reality hits.
|
| "AI-first" is the "blockchain" of 2025.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Username checks out, no em-dash needed.
| Aurornis wrote:
| There's a supposed Duolingo Slack screenshot going around Twitter
| with an internal announcement:
| https://x.com/eugeneyan/status/1917034784355979479/photo/1
|
| Archived here: https://archive.is/zqk5z
|
| If I was an engineer at a company that made this announcement I
| would not be feeling great right now. The claims that writing
| code will become a smaller part of our jobs and that productivity
| expectations will rise set off some alarm bells.
|
| Some of the statements like "For example, we know that large
| language models work best with context" are alarming, as if the
| people writing this announcement have a very elementary
| understanding of how LLMs work but are making drastic policy
| changes based on their limited understanding.
|
| Imposing rules on developers like the requirement that they use
| AI for every task, no matter how small, and work through LLMs
| first instead of writing code feels like an idea that comes from
| non-developers looking to make a thought leadership splash.
| Everyone I know who leverages LLMs uses them as an assistant
| where appropriate, but trying to go full vibe-code mode where you
| act through the AI isn't a secret route to more productivity.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > Productivity expectations will rise (from the screenshot)
|
| This should tell you everything you need to know. It's not
| about AI, it's about using AI to use as an excuse to do what
| most corporations were already doing: extract more work out of
| employees without getting them a pay raise, and if they can't
| provide that, get rid of them.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > It's not about AI, it's about using AI to use as an excuse
| to do what most corporations were already doing: extract more
| work out of employees without getting them a pay raise
|
| What's the point of tools if they don't make people work
| better?
| spwa4 wrote:
| > What's the point of tools if they don't make people work
| better?
|
| You just covered exactly that.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Well, even the so called best model, o3 makes huge errors,
| there is a lot of bark in these models, but enough bite. So if
| and when they see the AI is a bit less than what people project
| it to be, they might begin cutting back on ambitious plans.
| pjmlp wrote:
| That is why I try to steer away projects whose ultimate goal is
| to remove people jobs, automatic cash out systems, AI,
| ecormerce sites for big retail chains that close down their
| physical shops, ....
|
| Duolingo are not the only ones, I am aware of a project where
| the whole translation team for internal trainings was replaced
| by AI automatic translation of training materials.
|
| Any developer that celebrates AI vibe coding, is going to get
| some bad vides in the coming years.
| Tireings wrote:
| It comes from the idea that plenty of people don't like to
| explore and try things out.
|
| When I ask my collueges than you have the few enthusiasts and
| then the rest.
|
| The announcement sounds like 'start learning to use These
| tools' not vibecoding
| caseyy wrote:
| This comment is proudly and innovatively AI-first.
|
| It was written with 10% higher expectations, 10% higher bar (it
| was raised in a transformative way) and 10% fewer sloppy
| thoughts, by a rockstar 100x commenter who uses enterprise AI
| to blast their KPIs through the pipeline each day.
|
| Sometimes they even circle back to blast their pipeline several
| times in the same day, all thanks to AI.
|
| _Venture capital accepted by Venmo and Apple Cash. Past
| performance is not indicative of financial statements. GAAP
| statements may be disrupted and revolutionized at the sole
| discretion of the company. T's and C's apply._
|
| Have wonderful AI day! :)
| teeray wrote:
| > Imposing rules on developers like the requirement that they
| use AI for every task, no matter how small, and work through
| LLMs first instead of writing code feels like an idea that
| comes from non-developers looking to make a thought leadership
| splash.
|
| Or trying to write an earnings call headline. The more you
| mention how much you use AI, the higher your share price
| climbs!
| awalGarg wrote:
| The headline already rubbed me the wrong way, but seeing this
| made me immediately cancel my Duolingo subscription. I
| encourage others to do the same.
| klipklop wrote:
| Number of people I know that used Duolingo successfully to be
| fluent in a new language: 0
|
| Number of people I expect to meet in the future that used "AI
| first" Duolingo that successfully became fluent in a new
| language: 0
|
| They don't even really have a functional product to begin with.
| Meaning that it can take the average person and help them
| competently speak a new language in a reasonable time frame. Vibe
| coding I guess can't make it any worse....
| poisonarena wrote:
| I am fluent in spanish, and duolingo was really helpful at the
| beginner stage. When I was beginning to learn. I think between
| living in mexico (total immersion), consuming spanish media
| only, and about an hour of duolingo every night it was a
| tremendous boon. Mostly for learning to spell/remember gender
| nouns, and learning vocabulary.. I have tried other apps but
| the gamification also helps.
|
| I have now been speaking spanish for 9 years and have no use
| for duolingo when it comes to spanish, but I always recommend
| it as a resource to level up when you are a beginner.
| pacomerh wrote:
| It's a game. Think of DuoLingo as a fun introduction, a
| springboard for serious language learning. People I know who
| use it have fun, but by no means are advanced in whatever
| language their learning.
| dustincoates wrote:
| I get that it's popular to slag on Duolingo, especially in
| language-learning communities, but Duolingo is great for
| getting people started.
|
| I'm fluent in French and immigrated here about a decade ago,
| and I wouldn't have done that if not for Duolingo. It didn't
| get me anywhere close to fluent itself (Assimil was the single
| best resource, but no one resource can you get you to fluent),
| but it got me started and it got me committed. For that, I'm
| grateful.
| Larrikin wrote:
| This comment dips into the uncanny valley or sadly plant.
| It's possible 10 years ago it did help you but there's
| nothing about the current product that would have.
| dustincoates wrote:
| If Duolingo hired someone to be a plant and post under his
| real name on HN for over a decade just so one day he could
| make a lukewarm endorsement of the product in a reply to
| another comment, I'd have to question their business sense.
| watwut wrote:
| It actually made me able to watch shows in Spanish. It just
| happened as a result of me doing Duolingo basically like a
| game.
|
| I was still in the middle of Spanish course when I realize
| I can sorta kinda watch and understand some shows, so I
| watched. (The watching itself then made me progress mucj
| further, but it would not happen without duolingo).
| Shacklz wrote:
| I use Duolingo to learn French, for a few years already. It
| definitely can bring you up to A1/A2-levels of proficiency
| (at least for French), which is definitely a solid starting
| point to engage with the language further. In my case, I've
| started to take weekly evening-courses. If I started
| another language, I probably would start again with
| Duolingo for the super basic stuff, then start to learn
| vocabulary with Anki, and then start with some paid,
| organized course that guides me through the more complex
| parts.
|
| I still use Duolingo almost daily to have some continuous
| language exposure, for which I still find it useful
| (especially as the gamification helps with staying
| engaged). It has its limitations but it _does_ help me.
| Just to give a bit of a counterpoint; I find your statement
| a bit overly broad.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| There's something wrong with Duolingo in a way that I can't
| quite put my finger on it. I always feel like I'm learning to
| answer its questions and not learning the language. A key
| assumption of the app is that to answer its questions
| correctly you need to learn the language, but somehow I don't
| believe that's the case.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| It's the same as Tinder. The business isn't about getting
| you dates, the business is selling you the fantasy of
| getting a date. Those two things are different, but for a
| new user, difficult to distinguish. Duolingo offers you the
| fantasy of speaking a new language.
|
| Of course it is possible to learn a language using
| Duolingo, just like it is possible to get dates on Tinder,
| but it's just not a good method. If you're new to learning
| foreign languages, you'd be better off signing up for a
| course (but that costs time and money), and if this is your
| n-th foreign language, then you'd rather get a book and
| some boring flashcard app.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| Part of the problem might be that no one wants to pay
| anymore. I'm happy to pay for a course, but there is not
| a single in-person language course in my city left for
| the language I wanted to study.
|
| I booked the the single remaining one last year and
| shortly before the start they announced they will not run
| it anymore and instead do online classes only. Apparently
| the rent is too high and it just isn't viable anymore.
|
| It sucks all around :/
| theshrike79 wrote:
| You're learning words and random phrases like "My uncle
| takes his plants for a walk every week".
|
| Not stuff that's actually useful.
|
| But it still builds vocabulary and is better than nothing
| for the price.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Knowing what a sentence in the target language ought to
| feel like is very useful, though. You're learning what
| order the words go in, how to match genders, how to
| express different tenses, where to put prepositions, and
| so forth; the point is not to memorize the specific
| sentences but to absorb the structure of the grammar.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| It was easy, as a French speaker, to pick up a little Spanish
| for the holidays.
|
| To be honest though, the main thing that puts me off isn't the
| teaching quality (which is basic/so-so) but the plethora of
| weird patterns to keep you hooked. I don't buy the "we want you
| to succeed" justification. Streaks, streak freezes, begging
| notifications - anything to keep you looking at ads I guess.
| watwut wrote:
| Duolingo never even claimed they teach up to fluency. How much
| they promiss depends on language, but most developed one ends
| with B1.
|
| The fluency complaint is completely nonsensical. There is no in
| person class that would make you fluent, there is no textbook
| that would make you fluent.
|
| It is possible to criticize Duolingo, but the fluency claim
| kind of show you don't know what you talk about.
| palmotea wrote:
| > Number of people I know that used Duolingo successfully to be
| fluent in a new language: 0
|
| But they say they're "the world's best way to learn a
| language," right there on their homepage:
| https://www.duolingo.com.
|
| So either no one has ever successfully become fluent in a
| foreign language (because not even the best tool can be used to
| successfully accomplish the task), or the tech industry is full
| of liars and its claims cannot be trusted.
| chizhik-pyzhik wrote:
| "I read their marketing copy and it says they're the best"
| yupyupyups wrote:
| I hope that this backfires asap before turning into a bigger
| problem.
|
| I happen to have a Duolingo account, and was once a customer. I
| will send an angry message to their support team of AI robbots
| and hope it gets carried up to the top.
| yupyupyups wrote:
| I'm joking btw, not going to actually waste my time doing
| that.
| legacynl wrote:
| I love that whenever duolingo is mentioned all the armchair
| educational psychologists come out of the woodwork claiming
| that duolingo sucks because it's too easy or too much like a
| game.
|
| One of the most valuable determinants for learning a new
| language is regular practice. Answering 30 easy exercises
| correctly will do more for your language skill than 10 hard
| exercises of which you only answer 5 correctly.
|
| And easy questions have the added benefit of being less tedious
| and convincing more people to stick to the app.
| Larrikin wrote:
| As someone who waffles back and forth between how conversational
| I am based on the topic and how much I've studied recently, this
| comes as no surprise.
|
| Nothing about Duolingo gives the impression they actually want
| you to learn the language. It presents itself as an easy way to
| start, but if you are more than a single undergrad class into the
| language and have used any outside resources, it's an obvious
| waste of time.
|
| Everything on the platform is just a slower form of the most
| basic note cards. Anki does everything the platform does faster.
| Anki isn't suitable for all task but Duolingo takes the basic
| note card and makes you learn at a slower pace.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| It's gamified Anki with social pressure.
|
| If finding proper Anki decks for languages wasn't such a
| massive pain in the ass (Along with navigating the weird 30EUR
| mobile apps for it, are they official, are they not? Can a free
| alternative do the same?), people would use Anki a lot more.
|
| With Duolingo you can just install, launch, pick a language and
| get going.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| Anki is literally free on android. I made my own deck but
| there are plenty to go around. People spend so much energy
| making excuses for not learning a language that could be
| spent on... Just fucking getting on with it!
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I don't have the time to "make my own deck". The UI for
| Anki is janky at best.
|
| I seriously tried making a deck for my kid for math and
| holy shit it was a chore and a half.
|
| The same with trying to find a deck for a specific
| language, no luck there.
|
| For iOS there are about a dozen "Anki" apps? One for 30EUR,
| the rest have some kind of in-app purchases.
|
| I'll rather pay for Duolingo
| marssaxman wrote:
| How could you replicate all the speaking & hearing exercises
| with note cards? I can't imagine how that would work.
| qalmakka wrote:
| I don't know, AI seems quite antithetical to what Duolingo
| supposedly stands for. AI raison d'etre is to allow people to do
| stuff they cannot do themselves or replace human skill with
| automated processes. Duolingo literally sells language courses,
| in a world where translation jobs are getting less and less
| necessary thanks to AI being especially great at translating
| stuff.
|
| Also "AI first" is BS, until AI has a 100% accuracy it is only
| useful as long as there are still competent people around that
| are able to understand what the AI does. A level of competence
| that gets harder and harder to get in a world where AI assistants
| allow you to get by by just pressing enter and producing poor
| quality slop.
|
| Companies and management want to _replace_ human labour because
| just they don't understand that AI works best _alongside_ people.
| This doesn't surprise me; one of the worst problems in IT right
| now is that IT is both pervasive and extraordinarily sector-
| specific. Capital is in the hands of people that not only don't
| understand how IT and computers work in detail, but don't even
| understand how little they understand in the first place
| nope1000 wrote:
| If people wanted that, they could just ask an LLM to be their
| language coach. The big issue is that with a foreign language,
| you cannot really verify that anything the model gives you is
| correct. And with how LLMs work, the wrong answers will look very
| convincing. I don't think that's a good idea.
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| Right, so if the productivity gains were so blindingly obvious
| and immediate for everyone, mandates wouldn't be needed.
|
| These companies tried to quantify the productivity impact of work
| from home, so it's utterly bewildering to me that they would push
| these tool-use mandates without actually quantifying the impact
| LLM tools have on productivity. If it were just 'getting
| familiar' with AI tools to help define an AI-driven product
| mindset, I'd expect these CEOs to have more than a naive
| perception of the tools and their limitations.
|
| I honestly wonder where these mandates started--part of me feels
| like this is the nascent stage of a VC panic that their AI
| investment strategy might not work out.
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing thread:
|
| _LibreLingo - FOSS Alternative to Duolingo_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43829035 - April 2025 (290
| comments)
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| Do most people using Duolingo have anything to show for it? It's
| a time wasting online casino app dressed up with intellectual
| vibes. Not surprising that a spiritually dead company has
| spiritually dead values.
| n_ary wrote:
| In another news, I intend to uninstall duolingo effective
| immediately and actually in an effort to support human-first
| businesses and enroll into a real language course class where I
| get to talk to real human beings with same goal and have actual
| exams and people trained in teaching particular language.
|
| For me, Duolingo(uber for Anki flash cards of preliminary words
| for a 3 day tourist in a new country) was always an odd product.
| It is very popular among people because they can immediately
| learn how to say hi/hello, thanks, please in new language but
| after that, it is akin to learning to swim by reading different
| tips and tricks, without actually ever touching water or doing
| the act.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Not a whole lot stopping Duolingo to be replaced entirely by a
| thousand ChatGPt wrappers
| gs17 wrote:
| It's pretty funny reading https://www.quora.com/What-made-Luis-
| Von-Ahn-start-Duolingo/... now:
|
| > So, the largest part of the market was not being addressed
| because there was no great way to make money from them. Most
| people who wanted to learn a language couldn't really afford the
| best ways of doing it. We wanted to have a way to teach people
| languages for free. But not just free.
|
| > We wanted to have the best quality of language education, and
| offer it for free.
|
| Modern Duolingo feels like neither half of that sentence.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I shouldn't be surprised by the number of comments of people
| saying "I'm going to uninstall Duolingo immediately", but I am.
|
| AI is increasing our productivity just as the loom did back in
| the early 1800s. So are HN members now the luddites?
|
| We're both the developers and the destroyers?
|
| Why don't we all just go back to coding on punch cards if we're
| concerned improved productivity will take our jobs?
|
| We need to look at what we're doing, and what we will be doing in
| the next 10 or 20 years.
|
| Do we know what that will be? No. But should we get out the pitch
| forks when a company says "we're going to do more with less
| people because new technology allows us to do that"?
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