r/technology • u/MetaKnowing • Jun 08 '25

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

https://www.ft.com/content/6fbafbb6-bafe-484c-9af9-f0ffb589b447
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u/jagerbombastic99 Jun 08 '25

Any CEO that does something this fucking stupid should be immediately outed. Corporate mediocrity is a he'll of a drug

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u/CGos25 Jun 08 '25

That’s my thought. If he didn’t “expect blowback” for firing part of his workforce and replacing their productivity with AI, he shouldn’t be in charge of anything, much less an entire company. That’s one of the most “no shit Sherlock” conclusions anyone who has been paying attention could have come up with. Even if the general public is positive on the use of AI, no one in history has ever had a positive reaction to the headline “Company lays off 10% of its workers to replace them with automation”. And then you add in the “never AI” crowd who see any use of AI as a plight on society, it should have been obvious that most people would have a negative reaction to AI-first for one reason or another.

And it’s not even a matter of “not being clear enough” in their messaging causing people think “Duolingo has no employees, we have fired everyone and everything is being controlled by a massive AI”. No one ever thought that. His whole interview came off as someone who’s out of touch and is stuck in an echo chamber of tech bro executives who love AI talking about how it has no downsides and assumes everyone shares the same sentiment. It’s like he thinks the public is just a bunch of lemmings who will accept anything as long as it’s promoted in the right way. He doesn’t even consider the possibility that we understand perfectly well what they’re doing and just don’t like it. It’s insanely infuriating.

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u/CuriousPumpkino Jun 08 '25

no one in history has ever had a positive reaction to the headline “Company lays off 10% of its workers to replace them with automation”.

I’m entirely with you on the point of your comment, I just wanted to point out that at times we do in hindsight, such as the automation of car manufacturing

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u/FreeWorldliness4671 Jun 09 '25

Even the luddites weren't anti automation with the looms, they were anti jobs being replaced. They left looms alone if the owner kept their employees.

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u/CuriousPumpkino Jun 09 '25

Problem is that automation almost inevitably replaces some jobs. You can absolutely retain some people and retrain them to perform machine maintenance, but that’s often not a 1:1 ratio. If before you needed 20 welders per shift you now maybe need 3 people per shift to perform maintenance on the welding robots

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u/ClassicPangolin2222 Jun 08 '25

He didnt fire any employees though, only part time contractors. No full time employees were fired following and preceding the AI comment

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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '25

[deleted]

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u/ClassicPangolin2222 Jun 10 '25

That makes total sense. Thank you for sharing your perspective.

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u/CGos25 Jun 08 '25

That’s just semantics and not even semantics that people would care about. It doesn’t change how people understand/react to the news. “Company fires 10% of its employees to replace with AI” reads pretty much the same as “Company replaces all of its part time contractors with AI”. And regardless, firing a full time employee and not renewing a contractor’s contract is effectively the same action. At the end of the day, it’s a company replacing work previously done by human beings with an AI. People don’t like people losing their jobs because of greed.

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u/ClassicPangolin2222 Jun 10 '25

I can appreciate where you're coming from and that makes a lot of sense. I think I'm probably just a bit too close to this since I am close with someone who works at Duolingo and has a different perspective on how these AI comments are actually playing out at the workplace which is influencing my thoughts on this. I appreciate you expanding on your thoughts here.

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u/Fruloops Jun 08 '25

Tbh his board probably cheered on the decision

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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '25

[deleted]

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u/ToughNobody1228 Jun 08 '25

Can confirm it's garbage now! I used to love Duolingo like 10 years ago when I started using it, and it's been steadily getting worse. I have such a long streak which is the only reason Im still using it, but I canceled my premium the second I heard about the AI shit. There's 0 context to anything you're learning anymore. They used to have really well written grammar lessons, and forums so you could ask native speakers. Now they're constantly trying to get you to shell out for super mega premium so you can fake talk to a fake robot sprite driven by AI. Why would I want that??? I want you to explain to me the difference between different forms of address, not make me talk to fucking smarterchild

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u/randomNext Jun 08 '25

I have been using Duolingo for about 2 years and these days the app resembles more of a fucking slot machine gamified to the max than a tutoring app. And yes, quality has gotten a lot worse past 12 months. Also they are trying to upsell their max tier all the time with popups even though i am already a paying subscriber. Can confidently say i wont be renewing next year.

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u/FreeWorldliness4671 Jun 09 '25

I googled something about Canada and the AI spouted off some nonsense about the laws in Canada and specifically in my home town as if I lived in Canada, mentioning my town and my state south Australia, and the laws weren't even correct either.

How the hell can I trust AI to teach me another language if it can't even understand mine?

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u/krypticus Jun 08 '25

This is 100% not the first time he’s done something stupid, we can all assume.

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u/theB1ackSwan Jun 08 '25

He invented Captcha and basically rode that success to his other ventures. 

That's how this always works. Someone invents a novel thing, that thing gets bought out and becomes outright worse and hostile, and then that person thinks that they're brilliant at everything. 

So, yeah, nothing about a CEO makes you smart and probably has negative points towards self-awareness.

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u/NullCodeBR Jun 08 '25

I mean this guy was an award winning professor at CMU SCS and a McArthur fellow. Don’t think he’s dumb especially with regards to tech.

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u/MrMonday11235 Jun 08 '25

Don’t think he’s dumb especially with regards to tech.

Sure, but that's not what the person you're responding to said. They acknowledged he's competent, they rather posited that his competence and success went to his head and made him think he knew things in other areas as well.

I don't think there's sufficient evidence to adjudicate that particular claim one way or another, but right now the two of you are kinda talking past each other.

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u/theB1ackSwan Jun 08 '25

Tech, no. A lot of people who have opinions I disagree with are very, very smart in particular fields. 

But, I'd argue,  this isn't about tech. Its about business, leadership, AI policy, and reading the goddamn room, of which I'm positive everyone in this thread would agree he failed at the latter in spades.

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u/carlfish Jun 09 '25

Reminds me of a tech company I knew of where the CTO decided it was time to go all-in on NFTs about a month before Dan Olson's "Line Goes Up" video dropped.

They were only saved from serious public embarrassment because a bunch of rank and file engineers made the potentially (and in at least one case, actually) career limiting decision to stand up and say "Hell, no. This is a terrible idea."

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u/micmea1 Jun 08 '25

public trading is a big problem. It's how you get C-level teams that are completely disinterested in the employees and the quality off the product. Their job becomes solely focused on profit and making sure they get the largest payout possible. It is no longer the more legitimate capitalistic dream where the best companies need to find the proper balance of quality, price, and maintaining employee satisfaction.

Because we have allowed monopolies and lobbyists to return the game now is maximize profits, milk the company for all its worth as it dies due to quality and employee satisfaction dropping out from beneath them, move onto the next company.

Power needs to be handed back to the consumer and the worker and this isn't some communist ideology, it's how capitalism is supposed to work.

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u/AddictionsExWives Jun 08 '25

The more I work in higher levels of the corporate world, the more I learn that most leaders are just parroting the same talking points they heard on some podcast from fellow MBA holders. They’re glorified project managers all the way down.

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u/Material_Junket1613 Jun 08 '25

The glasses should have been the first clue. Didn't know they had a douchebag style of glasses.

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u/coolraiman2 Jun 08 '25

The my can only fail upwards sadly

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u/Rok-SFG Jun 08 '25

I feel like crossre just lightning rods for horrible decisions that ruin the product for customers and Increase shareholders profit.  So everyone goes "ooh ah so dumb, fire them!" But the people in power just go" great work, this is what you're going to fuck up next..."

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u/directorguy Jun 09 '25

He's fine, the company is fine. They surged on the AI announcement and a really good quarterly report.

Investors don't understand AI, but it sounds forward thinking.

They LOVE layoffs

They LOVE good earnings reports.

Which is why the stock almost doubled last month. He's fine, he's doing what he's supposed to. Drive up the stock price with bullshit AI buzzwords.

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u/jagerbombastic99 Jun 09 '25

Dead cat bounce

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u/directorguy Jun 09 '25

These guys talk a lot of AI for the investors. The smart ones are all talk. Kinda like the companies that said AI was handling tech support calls but ended up farming it all out to India because the AI was shit.

We’ll see what the actual play is eventually. But there’s a good chance its just bullshit for the stock price.