Duolingo Fires Translators in Favor of AI

duolingo is a textbook example of a nice small startup, with great ideas that is then completely overtaken my MBAs who run it into the ground as soon as there is enough of a client base to Sell. you fucking fucks all suck.
- Similar to Memrise, which was really fun when you could make your own mems using imagesearch and customise everything.... And now is a rubbish duolingo clone.
- Enshittification

I wasn't quite sure what to think about this, so I've asked my local LLM. Seems it is fine.
- Holy shit it's on the money
  
  It generally doesn't have a high opinion of translators (note that the emojis here are inserted as path markers to help with prompt debugging - but everyting else is from the LLM):

Sayonara, Duolingo.
As a writer on the internet with no power to stop these companies from scraping my work, you now want to teach me using someone else's stolen words and teach someone English using mine. Go fuck yourself.
- The circle of life continues, and literacy goes down. AI cannot proofread, it merely says "these letters usually go with these". AI screws up, people get taught shit language, they use it, it gets used as training data, rinse and repeat.
  
  The Extinction level meteor can't come soon enough.
  Time to pack it in and give some other microorganism a shot at the evolutionary big-leagues. Maybe they'll do better.
  
  Well language is a fluid thing. If more and more people get taught shit language, the language will change to match. We have far worse problems on this planet :)
  I do think these AI companies grabbing what they can without giving anything back is a problem though. In my view content creators are a bit hypocritical too though. When Google scraped the internet verbatim (viewable in google cache) they didn't mind because it gave them discoverability. Now they suddenly do care because they don't benefit directly. Really, the stance should have been made earlier. But I do agree it should be stopped. Or content creators compensated.
  
  Absolutely the large language models are over glorified word predictors that get it wrong. I’d go so far as to say, they get it wrong nearly all the time.

Honestly, when it comes to duolingo, you're probably best off sticking to Spanish or stuff like that.
I tried out a course in my native language, and it really wasn't great beyond the basics. Loads of mistakes.
And if you're going to be paying for that, you might as well buy (or pirate) a proper Spanish course.
- Spanish or French and only if you speak English. Everything else might as well not exist.
  
  That's a bit over the top, in my opinion. I've tried plenty of courses, and Duolingo is pretty good to get a hang of the basics of a language.
  I'd say, in my experience, the hardest part of learning a language is getting started, and I feel Duolingo is perfect just for that. To get deeper knowledge and become more comfortable, one should probably switch once they start feeling more comfortable with the alphabet (if there is a specific one), and with the basic vocabulary and grammar.
  EDIT: Forgot to add but another advantage of Duolingo, is that it's also great to get a taste and basic feel for different languages; and that can be especially useful for someone who is looking to learn a new language but can't quite decide on one.

Duolingo isn’t a good resource for learning a language, it’s focus is user retention
Innovative Language and Lingodeer are better
- But, retention means repetition, so you learn more, right? Not trying to defend Duolingo but I've been enjoying it for the last 3 years or so. Almost got 1000 day streak and my Spanish is getting better.
  
  It is fair to say it helps people stick with it but it ends up avoiding harder facets and puts more focus on memorizing rather than learning
- My experience is that duolingo is a good component of language learning but is bad as a whole package. I have that, a flash card app, daily word games, and a YouTube channel for a children's TV network in my language. None of them individually would teach me the language, but collectively they reinforce each other and fill in many gaps. Alas, neither innovative language nor lingodeer have the language I want at the moment.
  
  What are the flash card and word game apps?
- What makes these two better?
  
  More lesson focused than game
  lingodeer explains the grammar and innovative does a classroom approach with video lessons
- Duolingo isn’t a good resource for learning a language, it’s focus is user retention
  These two statements contradict each other. To learn a language you must practice it every day, week after week, month after month. It's an appropriate application of addictive game mechanics, because our motivation doesn't last long: 1-3 months for most people.
  Duolingo might not be the best place to learn some languages (e.g. German), but it can be a very helpful tool for everyday practice. And stuff like streaks, leagues, and other things are rather helpful.
  
  An advent calendar has user retention but it’s hardly a tool for learning languages

This is going to be a wild year for the white-collar bubble. Always remember that corporate wants "good enough for cheap" not "best in class."
- Yeah I'm not surprised or angry about it, isn't this basically what has always happened? Like at some point we had elevator operators, some company automated the elevator and now there are basically zero elevator operators.
  This is just happening all the time, like when I was a kid every gas station had people working at the station. Nowdays most stations around me are completely without workers, it's all self checkout (like supermarkets, McDonalds, etc).
  
  You are right but the problem here is it's happening all at once on several fields. It's not just elevator operators, it's anyone doing basic design tasks, writing, translating, voice narrating, and basic programming. And that's a lot of jobs.

- Welcome to Costco, I love you.

I've seen quality drops of Duolingo, ever since their ... IPO, sadly.
Anyway, here's some ways you can milk the rest of the Duolingo before completely abandoning it.
Use the web version, and type in all the answers if it's possible. Selecting words are good for introducing new words (and reminder in case you forgot), but by typing it on your own, it's faster to commit into memory.
Use classroom mode to get unlimited hearts, create your own classroom and invite yourself in. I assume that Duolnigo will probably eventually stop this loophole
Use search engine to search for the sentences you're unsure of. No, don't use machine translation, but search on the internet, and see if the sentence ever being used by the sites (news, academic, or personal homepage) using the target language.
I sadly still don't know what other comparable free alternatives to Duolingo. Anki is great, but it's largely flashcard for words, not sentences (unless you want to create your own deck). The others require subscription fee.
Other methods? Search for pdf of language grammar files, there are a lot out there. Some are godawful to read, especially those 'Comprehensive Grammar Guide' books. Some are amazing, e.g. Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese.
- To add to the list of resources:
  Todaku Books offer leveled difficulty, so even if you are starting out with Japanese there is something for you to read. The books are Creative Commons licensed, so don’t pay for them if you don’t want to.
  https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/what-is-tadoku-en/
- Another option is rocket language. It seems to be a lot focused on developing conversational skills. It's is paid but not subscription which I'm a fan of. You just buy the language you want. The first few lessons of a language are free if you want to try it. I'm test running it right now to start my switch away from Duolingo

I never liked Duolingo anyway. It's a bit stupid, it just teaches you some basic phrases without explaining the grammar behind it. So you're not really learning anything.
And I really hate 'gamification' in general. I love computer games but not gamified learning or exercising etc. It just puts me off.
- I actually had it the other way around, I wanted to learn to understand and speak Spanish a lot better. My wife is half Spanish and her family speaks zero English. Anyway started to learn with Duolingo and my Spanish did improve. But after a while I got to a point where most of the mistakes I made where spelling errors. I don't care how to spell in Spanish, I'm not going to write them, I just want to understand it and be able to respond. There is no option (afaik) to just learn the meaning of the words.
  
  If you’re having spelling errors in Spanish that’s something you could fix in like an hour by student Spanish pronunciation. It’s like the easiest language to spell in given its deterministic mapping between spelling and pronunciation.
  
  Learning Spanish as well via Duolingo, but I feel like it's slowing down and based on this post, looking at alternatives. Have you found one that works better?
- Duolingo does have grammar lessons, they cover the parts of speech, rules, exceptions and interesting notes.
  You actually have to click the grammar notes for each lesson, and many people skip it. Still it's up the user, not sure why this myth persists.
  
  I'm studying a couple of languages that don't have English as the native tongue. They provide no grammar notes.
  The ones with native English do, but accessing it is not intuitive since you have to go to the Units view.
- You don’t need an explanation of grammar to use proper grammar. Your brain is ready to absorb language and intuit the grammar.

People, there is an opensource alternative just waiting for your contributions https://librelingo.app/
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- Any languages besides Spanish planned?
  
  Basque AFAIK, but it's one dude. He's working on making it possible to contribute language courses without his help or much technical knowledge.
  Basically, a lot of the core code is done, what's missing is a nice UI for learning and language course editor, because at the moment it's just a bunch of files.
- As far as I LOVE this kind of thing, people really should stop using Libre something for their versions. Sounds weird
  
  Why? It's just Spanish for "free". And it's become pretty much of a standard to represent FOSS.

I noticed that they stopped giving free streak freezes two weeks ago. I have a 1200 day streak and my premium sub renews this month but I might just switch to another platform.
Edit: Canceled my subscription and left feedback about streak freezes. Three days later I get a free streak freeze. Not sure if it was a glitch or what. I'm gonna wait to confirm before renewing my sub.
- Free streak freeze? As in an option to stop an arbitrary counter that does nothing from being reset?
  
  Humans are so massively susceptible to gamification. It's nice for providing motivation, but it ends up being like an addiction the way companies leverage it.
- What other platform is available?
  
  Anecdotally, a friend who's pretty handy at languages uses more Memrise than Duolingo now. Similar sort of setup, but with a different style of delivery - more visual cues and a better repetition approach.
  
  Back in the day, I found Rosetta Stone to be a decent approach, it's the only reason I still know how to say "the kid is under the plane" in Arabic, without barely knowing any Arabic (it was in the first free demo lessons). The context turned a bit dark after 9/11, though...
  
  I've found Babble to be okay
  
  The duolingo format was never popular with polyglots. The game format makes it easy to feel like you did something which is a great thing, but the is the only pro people who have learned multiple languages find with it.
  There is a lot of debate about what the best way to start is, but all agree that you need to interact with the real language in real world type settings (watching a movie in the language with subtitles is real world, though you need to make an effort to listen not just read!) They also agree that time is important, you need to study at least an hour every day to make progress.
- I just got free streak freezes 11 days ago.
  So perhaps it's regional.

Expect a lot more "white collar workers laid off due to AI" posts coming. I wonder how long it will take for a (very well resourced, those are status-y jobs) movement to form in response.
- The movement of hating rich people, and pretending like they’re not part of our society? I think it already exists.
  
  Well, that's a bit of a salty tangent, but yeah, I guess they could take a class warfare sort of line on it. The other classical options are going full luddite, or just blaming a minority. Maybe they'll come up with something new, because I have trouble picturing laid off creatives spouting any of these.
  Right now, I think people are firmly in the denial stage. For whatever reason the thread isn't federating properly for me, but on beehaw I can see others in here saying human exceptionalism stuff, which is kind of not in accordance with science.

I think a lot about writing a story about some sort of Enshittification Avenger. So when a reasonably good service decides to enshittify, the avenger breaks into their board's house and beats the living shit out of them.

I just said to someone yesterday on Mastodon that it seems as though they're not using humans any more, because WTF is this shit?
- Yeah, this is frustrating.
  I can handle absurd sentences like "The dog is cooking the dinner", and actually finds them beneficial because it prevents me from guessing the whole sentence.
  But this is a sign that not enough human efforts are poured into create permutation of the answers.
  
  Let me guess, the full sentence was: "Last night we ate the dog cooked for dinner"... /s
  
  I actually see a learning purpose in those ridicilous sentences.
  I'll far more likely remember the cat that works at the small hospital than if Juan does it.
- This is frustrating, but it has always been an issue; and usually the more you advance in a language tree the more it happens, because fewer people have found the problem and reported it. It's a human problem that comes with not considering every possibility when creating an exercise. I'd imagine that using AI (in addition to humans) would actually help reduce cases like this, since they could be detected before users run into them.
- Interesting, I usually question my English skills if something like this happens!
  
  It's because a good translation is not (always) literal.
  In the German version it says taglich in hamburg. In English you would indeed put an adverb (like daily) at the end. It works the other way around but it's not really what a native English speaker would say.

"Enshitification"...
Yes I seem to remember how enshitified everything became after the firing of weavers do to the invention of the Loom.
The fuck you think was gonna happen?
Seriously all this whinging online about AI is getting ridiculous.
Get a fucking hobby.
- A loom is a precision machine. You know exactly what you're going to get when you use one. It's output was identical to manual work, only a lot more efficient and less error prone.
  There is no "AI". What we have is LLMs, which are probabilistic generators. It's anybody's guess what you're going to get when you use a LLM and they're more likely to introduce mistakes rather than eliminate them.
  The comparison to looms is incorrect. LLMs can be useful but I'm a completely different way. They shine when used to augment the work of a human expert but they can't be trusted to perform alone.
  So yeah, right now attempting to use a LLM exclusively leads to a drop in quality.
  
  "They shine when used to augment the work of a human expert but they can't be trusted to perform...".
  I'm sure someone wrote the same about the first looms.
- In a capitalistic world where your right to stay alive is determined by the money you make, replacing himan jobs by machine ones is a real problem.
  If what was happening was "ok so the machines are gonna do that so you're gonna have a lot more free time but you still get your wages", I for one would be happy.
  But what's happening is more along the lines of "well I hope you didn't just get a mortgage because here's the door hahaha don't be sad think lf the extra money the shareholders are going to make" and it's a real problem.
  Just because it's logical that shitty bosses take shitty decisions which impact negatively other person's lives doesn't mean we can't be upset and vocal about it.
  
  Then y'all Luddites can make a new luddite sub and post your complaints over there.
  This is a technology sub.
  In any world, you just can't stop progress, so complaints will be filed under "G", for garbage.
  And the world will keep on spinning.

The CEOs face the day he realizes all it takes to automate his company is a personal computer: 😃
The CEOs face the day after he realizes all it takes to automate his company is a personal computer: 🫠
- i wish workers would realize they can just work without CEOs, i know of at least one factory that was set to close down and workers just.. kept working, eventually gaining the right to buy the factory and run it as a co-operative

Duolingo, the app to work on something every day for years and be no more skilled in that ability than if you did nothing. Now fewer people will have useless jobs which is a problem since in many ways it's difficult to survive working a useful job.

Disappointing, but not surprising. I know I'm not going to "learn" a language with Duolingo, but it's been nice recognizing a few words and phrases when I hear them. But I don't really trust that a bunch of overworked and underpaid contractors are going to catch every error using AI is going to introduce. At least there are already alternatives in this thread for me to look through.

I use Duolingo for German but I’d happily switch to something else if they’re going to pull this shit. I’ll often times take things from Duolingo and run them through the Translate app on iOS to see if there are differences. It’s not ideal, but I also have no allegiance to companies.
- Clozemaster!
  
  Coming from Duolingo I found it a bit overwhelming. I tried one collection, but as I already know Spanish a bit, it was too easy. Any tips?

This time last year, I could still see the forum posts to related lessons when I'd get something wrong. Now, when I'm told my answer is incorrect, I have nothing to go off.
I'm trying to learn the baby steps of Korean. Being able to quickly read what I did incorrectly (and why, because usually people eould explain the grammar) was great. I hate that it's gone, and I'm considering making Busuu my main app

I need some more copium. Not Again :'(

The article seems to indicate they are using to reduce the amount of work that have to do in writing prompts, but still have translators review what the AI spits out. I think that’s different to SuperDuo which I believe is mean’t to use AI to be more conversational.

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary The popular language-learning app Duolingo cut 10 percent of its contracted translators last month amid a push to integrate generative AI into its services, multiple outlets have reported.
It's another alarming turn in an increasingly AI-laden labor market in which company leaders continue to implement automated technology wherever they can — often, as in this case, at the cost of human jobs.
According to Bloomberg, the firings were doled out just a few weeks after Duolingo bragged in a November letter to shareholders that the company was harnessing AI to produce "new content dramatically faster."
Duolingo also reportedly uses AI to generate some of the voices heard in various in-app language scripts and to prompt AI-generated feedback to users.
To make matters even more depressing: in a late December Reddit thread, a site user claiming to be one of the fired Duolingo translators alleged that their former team's remaining contractors are now tasked with simply checking AI-generated text for errors.
Trusting translation AI — meanwhile pushing remaining contractors to fact-check presumably high numbers of those "dramatically faster" content outputs — may well come at the cost of such nuance, potentially flattening the learning process and rendering language robotic.
Saved 52% of original text. :::