Duolingo plans to become “AI-first” company, ditches contractors

Duolingo has announced plans to become an “AI-first” company, and with that comes the gradual phasing out of contractors.

An email posted to the language learning company’s LinkedIn account reveals plans to put artificial intelligence first.

The post details plans to shift to AI-automated operations in place of regular contractors.

The “all-hands email” from Duolingo’s co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn says that AI will help the company get “closer to its mission” by creating a “massive amount of content,” and doing that manually “doesn’t scale.”

“One of our best decisions we made recently was replacing a slow, manual content creation process with one powered by AI,” von Ahn said in the email.

By shifting its focus to AI, Duolingo plans to roll out a few “constructive constraints,” which include gradually phasing out contractors “to do work that AI can handle.”

Alongside this change, Duolingo’s internal operations, like hiring and performance reviews, will also have an AI focus.

This means a person's ability to use AI will be something that Duolingo will look for while hiring.

However, the company claims this change won’t detract from Duolingo’s human-centric focus, as the language learning giant claims it still “cares deeply about its employees.”

“This isn’t about replacing Duos with AI,” the company said, “it’s about removing bottlenecks so we can do more with the outstanding Duos we already have.”

Duolingo wants its current employees to “focus on creative work and real problems,” not repetitive tasks.

The language learning company received a slew of comments, some more skeptical about the change than others.

One user said, “I'm a daily Duolingo user, and to be honest, this is a little concerning.” The user claims that Duolingo already has “quality control issues” within its service, and users complained that the existing AI-powered video call function is “useless.”

Another user criticized the ditching of contractors, questioning Duolingo’s belief that its employees come first.

“We care deeply about our employees, but we don’t give a tu-whit tu-woo about our contractors,” the user said.

Duolingo is a language and general learning app that helps people learn new skills, with over 100 million monthly active users.

But, netizens are concerned about this AI-first initiative, as they believe AI could essentially replace the service if Duolingo isn’t careful.

“Isn’t the real threat that AI will make learning languages unnecessary? Shouldn’t Duolingo be a learning-first company, with AI enabling that mission?” one person said.