Archived here: https://archive.is/zqk5z
If I was an engineer at a company that made this announcement I would not be feeling great right now. The claims that writing code will become a smaller part of our jobs and that productivity expectations will rise set off some alarm bells.
Some of the statements like "For example, we know that large language models work best with context" are alarming, as if the people writing this announcement have a very elementary understanding of how LLMs work but are making drastic policy changes based on their limited understanding.
Imposing rules on developers like the requirement that they use AI for every task, no matter how small, and work through LLMs first instead of writing code feels like an idea that comes from non-developers looking to make a thought leadership splash. Everyone I know who leverages LLMs uses them as an assistant where appropriate, but trying to go full vibe-code mode where you act through the AI isn't a secret route to more productivity.
This should tell you everything you need to know. It’s not about AI, it’s about using AI to use as an excuse to do what most corporations were already doing: extract more work out of employees without getting them a pay raise, and if they can’t provide that, get rid of them.
What's the point of tools if they don't make people work better?
You just covered exactly that.
Duolingo are not the only ones, I am aware of a project where the whole translation team for internal trainings was replaced by AI automatic translation of training materials.
Any developer that celebrates AI vibe coding, is going to get some bad vides in the coming years.
When I ask my collueges than you have the few enthusiasts and then the rest.
The announcement sounds like 'start learning to use These tools' not vibecoding
Number of people I expect to meet in the future that used "AI first" Duolingo that successfully became fluent in a new language: 0
They don't even really have a functional product to begin with. Meaning that it can take the average person and help them competently speak a new language in a reasonable time frame. Vibe coding I guess can't make it any worse....
I'm fluent in French and immigrated here about a decade ago, and I wouldn't have done that if not for Duolingo. It didn't get me anywhere close to fluent itself (Assimil was the single best resource, but no one resource can you get you to fluent), but it got me started and it got me committed. For that, I'm grateful.
Not stuff that's actually useful.
But it still builds vocabulary and is better than nothing for the price.
Of course it is possible to learn a language using Duolingo, just like it is possible to get dates on Tinder, but it's just not a good method. If you're new to learning foreign languages, you'd be better off signing up for a course (but that costs time and money), and if this is your n-th foreign language, then you'd rather get a book and some boring flashcard app.
I booked the the single remaining one last year and shortly before the start they announced they will not run it anymore and instead do online classes only. Apparently the rent is too high and it just isn't viable anymore.
It sucks all around :/
I still use Duolingo almost daily to have some continuous language exposure, for which I still find it useful (especially as the gamification helps with staying engaged). It has its limitations but it does help me. Just to give a bit of a counterpoint; I find your statement a bit overly broad.
I was still in the middle of Spanish course when I realize I can sorta kinda watch and understand some shows, so I watched. (The watching itself then made me progress mucj further, but it would not happen without duolingo).
One of the most valuable determinants for learning a new language is regular practice. Answering 30 easy exercises correctly will do more for your language skill than 10 hard exercises of which you only answer 5 correctly.
And easy questions have the added benefit of being less tedious and convincing more people to stick to the app.
To be honest though, the main thing that puts me off isn't the teaching quality (which is basic/so-so) but the plethora of weird patterns to keep you hooked. I don't buy the "we want you to succeed" justification. Streaks, streak freezes, begging notifications - anything to keep you looking at ads I guess.
I happen to have a Duolingo account, and was once a customer. I will send an angry message to their support team of AI robbots and hope it gets carried up to the top.
I have now been speaking spanish for 9 years and have no use for duolingo when it comes to spanish, but I always recommend it as a resource to level up when you are a beginner.
The fluency complaint is completely nonsensical. There is no in person class that would make you fluent, there is no textbook that would make you fluent.
It is possible to criticize Duolingo, but the fluency claim kind of show you don't know what you talk about.
But they say they're "the world's best way to learn a language," right there on their homepage: https://www.duolingo.com.
So either no one has ever successfully become fluent in a foreign language (because not even the best tool can be used to successfully accomplish the task), or the tech industry is full of liars and its claims cannot be trusted.
Nothing about Duolingo gives the impression they actually want you to learn the language. It presents itself as an easy way to start, but if you are more than a single undergrad class into the language and have used any outside resources, it's an obvious waste of time.
Everything on the platform is just a slower form of the most basic note cards. Anki does everything the platform does faster. Anki isn't suitable for all task but Duolingo takes the basic note card and makes you learn at a slower pace.
If finding proper Anki decks for languages wasn't such a massive pain in the ass (Along with navigating the weird 30€ mobile apps for it, are they official, are they not? Can a free alternative do the same?), people would use Anki a lot more.
With Duolingo you can just install, launch, pick a language and get going.
These companies tried to quantify the productivity impact of work from home, so it's utterly bewildering to me that they would push these tool-use mandates without actually quantifying the impact LLM tools have on productivity. If it were just 'getting familiar' with AI tools to help define an AI-driven product mindset, I'd expect these CEOs to have more than a naive perception of the tools and their limitations.
I honestly wonder where these mandates started--part of me feels like this is the nascent stage of a VC panic that their AI investment strategy might not work out.
Also "AI first" is BS, until AI has a 100% accuracy it is only useful as long as there are still competent people around that are able to understand what the AI does. A level of competence that gets harder and harder to get in a world where AI assistants allow you to get by by just pressing enter and producing poor quality slop.
Companies and management want to _replace_ human labour because just they don't understand that AI works best _alongside_ people. This doesn't surprise me; one of the worst problems in IT right now is that IT is both pervasive and extraordinarily sector-specific. Capital is in the hands of people that not only don't understand how IT and computers work in detail, but don't even understand how little they understand in the first place
Duolingo’s approach, explicitly tying headcount to proof-of-automation limits, baking AI usage into performance reviews, and prioritizing AI-first systems over retrofitting old workflows, is a glimpse at how "AI-first" won’t just mean using LLMs as a tool, but rebuilding the entire operational model around them.
That said, it's a double-edged sword. Contract workers were crucial to Duolingo’s early scalability. Shifting to AI removes human bottlenecks, but also human nuance — and teaching language is deeply nuanced. It’ll be fascinating (and maybe a little uncomfortable) to see if mass AI content keeps Duolingo's educational quality high as they chase faster scaling.
AI-first might win on cost and speed. But will it still win on outcomes?
Duolingo is widely regarded as more of a game than a high-quality learning experience. People obvious learn something from it, but it's a running joke almost everywhere on social media that people can be 100s of days into their Duolingo streak and still not learn much.
Getting people off of Duolingo and onto less gamified, more rigorous language learning courses is a common theme in the language learning world.
Which is not a terrible strategy. Most people learning languages are doing it for fun or a new years resolution or whatever. If you're serious about learning a language for real (ie you've moved country) then of course you're gonna go to a more serious platform.
I haven’t used Duolingo in over a decade, but recently I’ve become interested in learning conversational Spanish.
Was duolingo ever known for high educational quality? To me duolingo's main pitch was a way to gamify language learning. Of course it became a victim of its own success as soon as you could "pay to win".
Because they focus so much on beginning learners for whom nuance isn't important, this change doesn't seem like it'll hurt them.
It will be a flop. Either it won't get implemented like the C-levels dreamed in the first place and will remain policy on paper only or it will be rolled back quietly once reality hits.
"AI-first" is the "blockchain" of 2025.