Duolingo Can Go to Hell

This is one bird I simply cannot stand by.

You know that thing people say about how every generation thinks it’s the end of the world? How at many points in human history people thought we were nearing the collapse of civilization, but then life went on, and there’s simply a cyclical nature to exactly how pronounced that feeling is, depending on what’s happening in your corner of the world during your lifetime?

I find that refrain annoying on many levels…but I do tend to think there’s some amount of truth to it. I’m about as predisposed toward doom as anyone can be, and still some kernel within me is inclined to bet on the longevity of our species. Climate change is deeply alarming, nuclear war could annihilate us all at any moment, and still I can’t help but think we’ll be around—maybe even “OK”??—for at least a little while longer.

While I hold that belief firmly in one part of my brain, I must admit that another part feels very strongly that there’s something about this moment in time that feels distinctly like the end of the first act of a real-life techno-horror movie. The stage is set and the technology that will kill us has infiltrated the building, we just haven’t seen the full force of what it can do yet.

There are many contenders for this movie’s ultimate Big Bad, but it seems like artificial intelligence is most likely our enemy #1. It’s appropriately eerie how AI is pretty much everywhere at this point while still remaining kind of lowkey and cheerful. It’s silently popping up in places it didn’t used to be and gently robbing us of our humanity while not outright strangling us to death. And though the threat is palpable and already inflicting very real damage, there’s a background quality. It’s rare that someone says the quiet part out loud about where we might be headed in Act 2 when it comes to AI.

That might be the one piece of credit I can give Duolingo’s Luis von Ahn (the list stops there!). Late last month, the CEO announced plainly in an email to staff that the company would be going “AI-first” and phasing out "contractors to do work that AI can handle." In addition, von Ahn wrote that the company would integrate AI into human resources areas like hiring and performance reviews. Oh and that "Duolingo will remain a company that cares deeply about its employees." How sweet!

This sucks, obviously, but buckle up because it gets much worse. Von Ahn then went on a supposedly real podcast called No Priors (which brands itself as a “guide to the AI revolution” — pass!) and took the idea even further, asserting that the future of education rests in AI and that it’s “a lot more scalable to teach with AI than with teachers."

Von Ahn’s argument was essentially that a machine is more capable of offering personalized instruction for each student, tailored to their needs in a way a single human teacher simply cannot do. But don’t flip out because that’s not to say that schools won’t exist in the future, “because you still need childcare."

Before we go any further, let me stop right here to say that Duolingo, an app that’s already utilizing AI technology to “better” instruct its users, sucks ass at teaching you a new language. I know because I’ve been using it diligently every single day for years. I picked it up during the thick of the pandemic to reconnect to my Spanish language skills, and am now enthusiastically ending my 1435-day streak. Von Ahn’s comments shook me out of the hallucination I’d been in about the supposed good that stupid little owl was doing for me.

Hallucination is a bit strong, honestly. The truth is that I, like many Duolingo users, had long been aware that the app was barely doing anything for my Spanish skills. I was dubious of its efficacy, felt irritated by the inability of the technology to understand what I really needed, and generally experienced the very modern fatigue of the gamification of well, everything. The experience of my daily lessons has had diminishing returns and a deep sense of bad vibes as AI creeped in. The tech is supposed to make my learning experience better, but instead, it seemed to think I needed to do endless drills on the Spanish word for hill.

You can’t learn a language by spending three minutes each day on your phone, and you certainly can’t teach a classroom of children with artificial intelligence. I don’t need to explain to anyone reading this that a human teacher provides innumerable things that a computer cannot, but there’s something particularly heinous about von Ahn suggesting that in the future, the primary utility of a teacher would be as a babysitter. Teachers are some of the most overworked and least supported laborers, doing vital work, and the CEO of an app thinks tech can do it better. Sure! Because a computer doesn’t need days off, and it definitely won’t ask for a classroom turtle. Or a raise.

Von Ahn has since walked these comments back after things didn’t land so well with the public, and he claims that people are misunderstanding what “AI-first” means. From what I can tell, he was genuinely not prepared for the fact that his company with the sassy owl mascot isn’t beloved enough for consumers to overlook its leader confidently pledging to phase humans out of its business model. The company is now even engaging in deranged social media posts to try and laugh things off, but a quick dive into the comments indicates that’s not quite going as planned. And while I’m sure many people will continue to use Duolingo even if they take issue with von Ahn’s comments, it’s also clear that there’s a consistent trend illustrating that people actually don’t love it when brands publicly and ruthlessly embrace AI. People actually kind of like having jobs and they’re fucking terrified of what’s coming.

Part of what I’ve found increasingly alienating about Duolingo is what a contrast the experience is to the language learning I had in school. In the most basic and fundamental sense, learning a language is about human connection. You do it because you want to connect, and you need to connect to do it. It’s a shame how much that gets warped in the app grinder, and it’s a bleak reality that—despite von Ahn’s new assertions to the contrary—the people behind the app will inevitably get eliminated from the equation of making it.

In his original email, von Ahn wrote: "AI is already changing how work gets done. It's not a question of if or when. It's happening now … When there's a shift this big, the worst thing you can do is wait."

Well, I’m not waiting. I’m ending my streak and saying good riddance to the shitty little app that wasn’t teaching me Spanish anyway. I’ve already started my search for a human being to help me do that. I wish the current employees of Duolingo luck—this isn’t their fault and for the record, I wasn’t paying anyway. And I think I’ll spend those extra three minutes each day putting energy into figuring out how we eliminate tech CEOs instead.