Technology @lemmy.zip

3mo ago

Duolingo CEO on going AI-first: ‘I did not expect the blowback’

www.ft.com Duolingo CEO on going AI-first: ‘I did not expect the blowback’

Luis von Ahn says criticism over strategy change shows ‘anxiety’ about technology replacing jobs

Luis von Ahn says criticism over strategy change shows ‘anxiety’ about technology replacing jobs

Archived version: https://archive.is/20250608171624/https://www.ft.com/content/6fbafbb6-bafe-484c-9af9-f0ffb589b447

59 comments

”I’m out of touch with reality” - another dipshit rich guy.

That's a plain and simple admission that you are incompetent at your job. You should resign not post puff pieces at FT...
- I feel like the only job AI would be better suited at would be CEO.
  
  I mean, they take in current hype, change a few words and then regurgitate it with slightly different words.
- Nah let him keep it longer. I think the company sales can go lower

Luis von Ahn says criticism over strategy change shows ‘anxiety’ about technology replacing jobs
Motherfucker, you're the one that fired slews of employees to be replaced by text-prediction algorithms. It's not "anxiety", you're fucking doing it.
- Yeah, he learned nothing. He's just upset that everyone didn't agree with him.
  He's going to keep pushing the same nonsense as soon as the attention blows over, and he'll be just as surprised when it goes bad.

Anti-human little creep, I uninstalled and cancelled my subscription as soon as I heard the news

Way to reinforce the stereotype, out-of-touch rich dude. Most people who actually work for a living see no benefit from AI, and resent it being shoved into every single product, whether it makes sense or not. Oh well, at least you can burn boatloads of VC money while also destroying the environment and abusing intellectual property to train it!
- LLM are actually moderatly useful in my line of work but I still think they are super unethical and terrible, ungodly things.

It's hardly surprising that these people are out of touch when they're constantly surrounded in a bubble of yes-men, cultish AI sycophants, VC investors and other "dark enlightenment" enthusiasts.
It's a pathology, really. A kind of shared delusion in service of global capital.
- christ i hate the term "dark enlightenment" more and more it's being used to be an "inevitable" and romanticised spin to reactionary bullshit, stupidity and panic

CEOs are overall just not smart and we need to stop that belief
- Is there really a single person of this belief, after the whole HBO name-change stupidity? That is still among the worst business and branding decisions I have ever seen.
  
  I would argue that it is one of the most deeply held American beliefs even if it’s not talked about openly. Successful people are almost always viewed as intelligent by default. Despite all evidence to the contrary.
  People STILL call Elon a genius ffs
  
  "Well if they are so dumb why do they have so much money???"

Fire that CEO, he's an idiot.
- If you have ever been to any major SLT or higher meeting, the phrases "This is the first time I am hearing about that" or "That's not what was reported to me" come up so much that I'm amazed the meetings even finish on time. Plausible deniability of the name of the game.
  
  I said "I sent a video recording of this a month ago and received confirmation. Do you not have that?" and got back "I never got that."
  "Alright, got it. Thankfully it's not my problem anymore but you know where yours is." and left it at that.
  
  That's true and this is not an example of such a situation, because he knew exactly what the reaction was going to be. He probably felt that he could ride that AI bubble away from it, but he knew the reaction was waiting for him.
  The other thing about that claim, when it could possibly be credible, is it means that essentially the boss is not qualified to do their job. The one thing they should have done is been chatting with ordinary workers or customers to see what the actual needs are, and they're admitting it to somehow deflect from a bad decision they made but in doing so they've unwittingly shown that they're basically incompetent at their entire job.
- Better yet, replace them with ai. Don't need to pay someone 300x of an average workers wage just to take bad decisions

Lemme rephrase that for ya mate:
"I did not anticipate people getting angry that i turned the program into a complete steaming pile of useless shit"
It's not the children who are wrong.

Look at his old amas on Reddit to see what kind of guy he is. He's always been a prick.
- I looked through a few pages worth of his comments (in English and Spanish) and I didn't pick up on that. Was there a particular response you were thinking about, or might it have been something that is now deleted?
  https://old.reddit.com/user/vonahn
  
  Around the time they switched to more gamified pathing about two years ago he did not respond well to valid criticisms by people with disabilities in one of those AMAs and it is a major reason why I quit. I will have to dig when I'm on a PC. There were several posts on that subreddit on that topic around that time. I'm not sure if they are still there.

shows 'anxiety' about technology replacing jobs
No, it’s because over the last few years you’ve made your app progressively worse and worse. Almost the entire time I’ve been using this app I’ve seen it get worse and worse. And it’s clear that your push for AI has made it a more boring way to learn.

Well prime example of a ceo making a stupid ass mistake. He should be replaced and bonuses removed.

Cancelled my sub when I found that out. Switched to busuu, comparing the two, busuu and Duolingo seem to have different teachings and I noticed that my ability to understand things (comments) in duo is slowly becoming paywalled on the pro(paid) version... Wtf??! Quality of lessons is also seemingly going down.
~~Then I heard they are handing user data to ICE (maybe this is a rumor) but it just pushed me away even quicker.~~
I don't have proof of this so I take this back but am leaving the text so as to give context to the comments below.
- They don't appear to be sharing any data with ICE. The Mozilla Foundation issued a report saying defence contractors were assembling dossiers from publicly available data, including duolingo data.
  https://cyberinsider.com/mozilla-calls-for-action-to-stop-surveillance-firms-data-scraping/
  
  Ahhh. I see. So it was some what alarmist. I shall update my comment.
- Try Language Transfer. It's a very different approach from rote memorization.

“I have too much money!”
“I think much too highly of myself!”
“I’m a complete bastard!”
- Bet he's got white pants

He vomited an assumption on how people would react, and acted on it. The outcome of his actions proved the assumption wrong. At this stage, a sane / rational person would step back and say "...perhaps I should inform myself". But no, this bloody muppet had to vomit yet another assumption - why their reaction was negative. rolls eyes

The Tech CEO Bubble is real and one of the most harmful, even if it doesn't get talked about like our respective political bubbles, geographical bubbles, etc. I believe he was actually that deluded that people were as hyped about AI replacing workers as he was.
- It isn't exclusive to the CEOs. It is really just the big tech giants in general
  
  Business majors have been allowed free reign for too long, we must unite against the enemy within, in this manifesto I will

As usual tech obsessives are completely disconnected from the general population.

~~I could not correctly predict that most of this is hype and got delusional thinking I could make some quick bucks~~ PEOPLE ARE AFRAID OF TECHNOLOGY

CEOs are rich enough to live in their own delusional bubble. They are very out of touch with the average person, or their own workforce. This is nothing new.

Then you're a fucking idiot, anyone could see it coming.

Of course he didn't expect the blowback. All of the CEOs are in their own little worlds trying to figure out how to make money off of AI. They're all taking their personal money and investing heavily in AI corporations, so they're all very pro AI and couldn't understand why your average person who is pretty sure it's going to make their life worse through jobs or other means would be anti-AI.

Somewhat related, I just started Spanish lessons using Language Transfer. Fewer bells and whistles but it’s human centric.
- For my money (and I do donate every month to Language Transfer, because all the content is completely free) this is the best system for actually learning to use a language, as opposed to memorizing words and phrases.
  You can do it with YouTube audio, SoundCloud MP3s, or the convenient app that does what it needs to without any extra bells in whistles.

I work for an AI company and even we thought what he said was stupid. I hope he gets what he deserves...but unfortunately I don't know if that's how capitalism in America works as of late.

He should have asked ChatGPT if there would be any blowback to using an LLM instead of people.
- He may have done just that and its forced positivity convinced him he was a genius.

Because ceos habe lost all their touch with reality (if they ever had any)

Still not installing it, Luis.

I Uninstalled. And use Memrise now, it is very fun with video of people to understand the word better
- I also made the switch to Memrise. Its great! Actually a platform made for learning and not just a game disguised as learning.
  They also have an option for a lifetime purchase instead of a running subsciption, which I am a huge fan of.

A serious three-step questionnaire for any subscription service considering AI:
Could your paid centralized service be accomplished by free local models?
Yes it could.
Don't ruin your thing with cloud AI bullshit.

Lol what a gimp
- Get the name of my image editor out of your mouth
  
  Lol what an MS Paint

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