Duolingo CEO Clarifies AI Stance After Backlash: Read Memo
In late April, language-learning app Duolingo made a series of AI-related announcements. CEO Luis von Ahn wrote a memo to employees detailing the company’s official “AI-first” approach and how, through “advances in generative AI,” it was able to double its course offerings in record time. Duolingo also said it would “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle.”
Naturally, the news didn’t go over well with some Duolingo employees and contract workers. After several weeks of pushback, von Ahn has clarified his previous comments (while still committing to being “AI-first”) with a post on LinkedIn.
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“One of the most important things leaders can do is provide clarity,” von Ahn wrote. “When I released my AI memo a few weeks ago, I didn’t do that well.”
Duolingo’s CEO noted that he has “taken time to follow up internally with Duos (our employees),” and then wrote a summary of those conversations for the public.
“I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen with AI, but I do know it’s going to fundamentally change the way we work, and we have to get ahead of it,” he wrote.
He noted that Duolingo has always embraced new tech (“why we originally built for mobile instead of desktop,” he said), and that the company is “taking that same approach with AI.”
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“To be clear: I do not see AI as replacing what our employees do (we are, in fact, continuing to hire at the same speed as before),” von Ahn wrote.
He ended the post stating that the company is providing AI training for employees on how to use the tech as a “tool to accelerate what we do, at the same or better level of quality.”
While Duolingo’s CEO may be trying to calm employees’ fears of being replaced by AI, Fiverr’s CEO is definitely not.
Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman wrote in an internal email last month (and since on X): “AI is coming for you.”
“It does not matter if you are a programmer, designer, product manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support rep, salesperson, or a finance person,” Kaufman wrote.
In a 2023 report, Goldman Sachs estimated that AI could automate 300 million full-time jobs. McKinsey, meanwhile, predicted that up to 375 million workers may be displaced by AI by 2030.
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