Workers need a 'mind shift' amid the AI revolution, says Duolingo CEO
Following some negative responses to its recent "AI-first" strategy announcement, Luis von Ahn said some had misunderstood the intent and that Duolingo wasn't replacing its workforce with machines.
"Every tech company is doing similar things," but "we were open about it," he told the Financial Times in an interview published on Sunday. "I should have been more clear to the external world."
In April, Duolingo shared a companywide email on LinkedIn outlining its push toward more AI-driven operations.
Some users accused the language-learning app of firing staff en masse. That prompted von Ahn to clarify in a LinkedIn post last month that he did not see AI replacing employees and that Duolingo was "continuing to hire at the same speed as before."
He told the FT that some misread the message as, "we have fired everyone and everything is being controlled by a massive AI."
While a "very small number of hourly contractors" doing repetitive work will no longer be needed, von Ahn said internal reactions were less dramatic. Employees mainly asked how performance reviews would reflect AI use, he said.
Rather than eliminating jobs, von Ahn said the shift was about rethinking how work is done.
He is encouraging staff to assess whether their work can be done partly or fully by AI: "It's just a mind shift that people first try AI. It may be that AI doesn't actually solve the problem you're trying to solve — that's fine."
Letting AI take over routine tasks will allow employees to focus on more strategic and creative work, von Ahn explained.
For engineers, this could mean writing less code and spending more time guiding AI-generated development. Designers, meanwhile, may become like "creative directors," using AI to generate illustrations in Duolingo's signature style.
Adding languages to the platform has been labor-intensive, but he believed AI would help speed up this process.
Despite the uncertainty, one thing was certain, von Ahn said in a LinkedIn post last month: AI would "fundamentally change the way we work — and we have to get ahead of it."
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