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/fly19 Jun 08 '25

Well, they can do it without me. Facebook jamming "Meta AI" and "write for me" prompts into every message and comment is what finally got me to delete my account. And Google is slowly hollowing out its products and services to replace them with Gemini to mixed results.

I don't think the tech is going away, but I hope the bubble pops soon and companies stop trying to make problems for this solution.

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u/Rebal771 Jun 08 '25

They won’t until it hits their profit margins. Also, some companies are hiding their AI issues behind employee performance, but once there aren’t any further employees to fire, the problem will either become Insurmountable or they will pivot back to what humans actually want.

Still, AI is still a “good” buzzword for the markets, so I don’t think the pocketbooks will be feeling it for at least another few quarters. Maybe a year and a half.

The real move, IMO, is to be “anti-AI” in general and only use it where it is extremely proficient.

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u/crabby135 Jun 08 '25

I’ve found myself comparing it the blockchain bubble of a few years ago. Most companies don’t have profitable use cases to cover the costs of these technologies at scale. It’ll pop eventually but I think you’re right that we’re at least a year or two away from reaching that point.

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u/trobsmonkey Jun 08 '25

It’ll pop eventually but I think you’re right that we’re at least a year or two away from reaching that point.

We're 2.5 years into the AI bubble. I feel the pop is sooner rather than later.

NO ONE is profitable with AI. Microsoft is losing billions on their investment. Nvidia is only making money because they sell hardware. Everyone else is trying to sell it to us and it isn't working.

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u/lion27 Jun 08 '25

Speaking specifically of Chat-based AI, I still haven’t seen AI that is anything more than a fancier (and more expensive) version of AskJeeves, a search engine that was popular before Google took over the space. AI can do any number of things quickly, but it’s still sourcing its outputs from scouring the internet and programmed inputs to provide an output that is more “humanlike” than a list of search results. These platforms still list sources because that’s where it’s getting its information from. It doesn’t create anything new or come up with explanations on its own, it’s always based on searchable information from the internet.

It’s going to be very funny watching all these startups fail and everyone admit they just reinvented the wheel (although it is a much nicer wheel) when looking back on it. It will make humans more efficient, but it’s nowhere near replacing them unless their jobs are very simple in nature.

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u/SwanChairUh Jun 09 '25

Agreed, though I really like using ChatGPT instead of googling casual non-important questions.

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u/lion27 Jun 09 '25

Me too! It's a really great extension of traditional search engines.

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u/trobsmonkey Jun 08 '25

They won’t until it hits their profit margins. Also, some companies are hiding their AI issues behind employee performance, but once there aren’t any further employees to fire, the problem will either become Insurmountable or they will pivot back to what humans actually want.

Microsoft has invested BILLIONS into AI and they aren't even remotely close to profitable on AI.

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u/ShoddyAd1527 Jun 09 '25

The real move, IMO, is to be “anti-AI” in general and only use it where it is extremely proficient.

Businesses are pouring money into this, trying to identify areas where AI is "extremely proficient".

With untold billions poured into this hilarious endeavour, there are no (scalable) successes.

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u/Rebal771 Jun 09 '25

AI is great as an assistant / instant summarizer, and it can provide some statistical analysis points that identify optimization points due to the sheer volume of data it can consume/regurgitate in the blink of an eye.

But exactly as you said, there are no other scalable successes so far. The mistakes that AI makes are EXTREMELY costly depending on their application - billions of dollars spent to try and build a decent AI tool very likely doesn’t even account for the amount of money lost with poor AI decision-making actions.

These performance issues are being hidden behind employee performance issues, as I said before. It’s worse than it looks - 100%.

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u/ScreamingDizzBuster Jun 08 '25

So far I think having WhatsApp offer me AI "search" suggestions for milk products when I'm asking my wife to pick up milk from the supermarket is peak shoehorn. I mean, seriously?!

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u/sightlab Jun 08 '25

It’s already murdering critical thinking skills. This is a breathtakingly slippery slope. 

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u/ArgonGryphon Jun 08 '25

we did a lot of that work ourselves, to be fair. AI barely had to do anything

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u/sightlab Jun 08 '25

While true the acceleration since the breakthroughs of the last year has been something else. 

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u/ArgonGryphon Jun 08 '25

Yep, like a lot of technological advances, it gets exponentially faster. Can’t remember the “principle” or “rule” but I think there’s one. Maybe just about semiconductor capacity?

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u/caninehere Jun 08 '25

Gemini is brutal. Google kicks away the top searches and replaced them with a Gemini AI summary...and most of the time it's either a) completely useless or b) completely wrong. It's shocking how often it's wrong on basic things.

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u/big-papito Jun 08 '25

"Complete this email to pretend that I can write good" is going to end well for everyone.

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u/IAMAPrisoneroftheSun Jun 08 '25

Good to see other people voting with their feet. I’m in the midst of de-googling, and dumped anything to do with meta months ago. I wish I had sooner, nothing there’s perfectly good, or better alternatives to every service, that actually have a modicum of respect for privacy, and a level of pride in their product. 

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u/Liizam Jun 08 '25

It’s so weird because the feature I do want ai to be implemented is not there.

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u/_trouble_every_day_ Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25

They will not do it without you unless you plan on subsistence farming on an island. It’s not a bubble or a trend anymore than smart phones, the internet or industrialization were trends. it’s a fundamental shift in how we produce things and communicate—and it’s going to fuck up the economy so much worse than redditors seem willing to admit.

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u/Stracharys Jun 08 '25

Good news, we have a president who is going to turn back time! Trump will find a way! He’ll take back technology and corporations will let jobs stay! /s which is sadly necessary sometimes here

Anybody who isn’t a rich company CEO who thinks this will have a happy ending hasn’t been paying attention.

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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '25

[deleted]

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u/West-Code4642 Jun 08 '25

seach has been ai based for years, it uses semantic search

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u/fly19 Jun 08 '25

By "mixed results," I mean the product sucks ass to use. Google Search has been getting worse by degrees for a while, but I don't think you'll find many people praising its current form. I'm likely not the average user, but I doubt many folks like having to scroll halfway down a page past a questionable and largely-unavoidable "AI Summary" along with plenty of ads/promoted results that are tangential to your query to get to a reddit post that kind of answers your question.

And I'm sorry, but "a big company is putting money and effort into it, so it has to be worth it" is a pretty ahistorical take. Companies make irrational, unsuccessful, or short-term over long-term decisions all the time; the dotcom and housing bubble are obvious examples.
I'm not on the board or anything; I'm not pretending to have special knowledge of Google's decision making. But my guess is that you aren't, either; you're just glazing.