A week after declaring that AI would eventually replace contract workers at the language-learning app, Duolingo’s CEO said the company was “continuing to hire” and would support its existing workers in getting up to speed on the technology.
It follows buzzy startup Klarna in backing off an AI-first promise.
Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO, took to LinkedIn on Thursday to walk back a previous stance pushing AI use over human employees.
Years ago, I used Duolingo only, every day for about 4-5 months until i reached a point where it was difficult enough that I was making too many mistakes.
I later did about 10 lessons with an online teacher, starting from the basics, pronunciation, grammar, alphabet and etc. When I carried on with duolingo after the lessons, it was so much easier that I was getting 100% rights. Just 10 lessons were better than months on duolingo.
Made me realise that duolingo and similar apps are not the best way to learn.
Duolingo is absolute shit for the basic sentence structure and rules because nothing is explained. Especially if learning a language with a different script like cyrilic or arabic or chinese writting.
I had some issues with norwegian because certain rules were not really clear and also not explained. They also removed the comments part where people could discuss the sentences and such.
Once you know the basics duolingo actually becomes usable as a vocabulary expansion and maybe listening and speaking exercises.