{"id":77507,"date":"2025-08-19T10:15:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T10:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/77507\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T10:15:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T10:15:16","slug":"duolingo-ceo-says-controversial-ai-memo-was-misunderstood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/77507\/","title":{"rendered":"Duolingo CEO says controversial AI memo was misunderstood"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn was loudly criticized this year after <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/04\/30\/duolingo-launches-148-courses-created-with-ai-after-sharing-plans-to-replace-contractors-with-ai\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">declaring that Duolingo would become an \u201cAI-first company,\u201d<\/a> he suggested in a new interview the real issue was that he \u201cdid not give enough context.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cInternally, this was not controversial,\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/08\/17\/business\/duolingo-luis-von-ahn.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\"> von Ahn told The New York Times<\/a>. \u201cExternally, as a publicly traded company some people assume that it\u2019s just for profit. Or that we\u2019re trying to lay off humans. And that was not the intent at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the contrary, von Ahn said the company has \u201cnever laid off any full-time employees\u201d and has no intention of doing so. And while he didn\u2019t deny that Duolingo had <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/05\/04\/is-duolingo-the-face-of-an-ai-jobs-crisis\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">cut its contractor workforce<\/a>, he suggested that \u201cfrom the beginning \u2026 our contractor workforce has gone up and down depending on needs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite the criticism (which <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/08\/07\/the-backlash-against-duolingo-going-ai-first-didnt-even-matter\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">does not seem to have made a big impact<\/a> on Duolingo\u2019s bottom line), von Ahn still sounds extremely bullish about AI\u2019s potential, with Duolingo team members taking every Friday morning to experiment with the technology.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s a bad acronym, f-r-A-I-days,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to pronounce it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019re always looking to evolve, and by providing some insight into your perspective and feedback into TechCrunch and our coverage and events, you can help us! Fill out\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/survey.researchresults.com\/survey\/selfserve\/53b\/g002\/s0064551?list=tcap#?\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">this survey<\/a>\u00a0to let us know how we\u2019re doing and get the chance to win a prize in return!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn was loudly criticized this year after declaring that Duolingo would become an&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,28193,19694,39542,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-77507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-duolingo","12":"tag-in-brief","13":"tag-luis-von-ahn","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}