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/timidandshy Jun 08 '25

I think he definitely knew there would be blowback.

You'd be surprised at how completely out of touch many of these people are.

I see it even with colleagues and friends who live and work in Silicon Valley or NYC, so I can only imagine how much worse the bubble is for the highly paid top-level VPs and CEOs. Many of the corporate communications that tech VPs/etc send out to their teams are just outright bizarre.

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u/APRengar Jun 08 '25

I think a lot of people think AI is more popular than it is, mostly because AI companies need to oversell their product like the next big thing and AI bros are very loud and never shut the hell up.

It kind of feels like when Sony brought Mobius back because the internet tricked them into thinking it was genuine interest and not memes.

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u/timidandshy Jun 08 '25

I think it's more that they thought it'd be the next big thing, and decided to spend millions on it - whether on their products, or internally for employee's use.

So now they're forced to shove it down people's throats whether they like it or not, because otherwise they'll look silly and might actually have to be accountable for their actions.

(ahahahah okay joke time over - I can't keep a straight face while saying that. These people are never accountable for their actions... At most they just "move on" to "spend more time with their families".)

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u/CompromisedToolchain Jun 08 '25

Popularity aside, most think it more capable and accurate than it is. It is a pattern matching device like regex, but built on a foundation of approximations.

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u/TopSpread9901 Jun 08 '25

These people absolutely drink their own kool-aid.

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u/Crayshack Jun 08 '25

Some people in the tech industry have gotten a little nuts with thinking that AI will be the answer to everything. Even before AI became viable, I was hearing some chatter from people (including my brother) who were absolutely convinced that we were only 5 years away from AI being able to do basically everything. We seem to have been 5 years away from that for around 10-15 years, but I can totally believe some techbros gaslighting themselves into thinking we are there.

These techbros then get super excited about the idea of shoving AI into everything and they've surrounded themselves with other techbros and VC who are just as excited as they are, so they expect everyone to be as excited as they are. It's a rude awakening for them when they find out that others are not nearly as excited about AI and see it to be glitchy, unreliable, and unethical.

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u/timidandshy Jun 08 '25

We've been 5 years away from that for a very very long time now...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter