Is Duolingo the face of an AI jobs crisis?
Is Duolingo the face of an AI jobs crisis?
techcrunch.com
Is Duolingo the face of an AI jobs crisis? | TechCrunch
31 comments
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They have less than 1000 employees. Previous cuts were of 10% of employees. Are they really being replaced with AI or is the curriculum just finished? I have a feeling AI isn't expanding very much of the curriculum. Duolingo is probably just spouting "we have AI" nonsense like every technology company to sound like they are cutting edge.
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I doubt they've completely covered every important language. And from what I've seen, their speech recognition quality is terrible. So obviously there's still room for improvement.
And language changes over time, though maybe not much on these timescales. But even if the curriculum officially covers 100% of a language at one point in time, the language is still going to drift from that snapshot.
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Check out Mango. I was able to get a free subscription through my library.
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Duolingo sucks for language learning
Slow input method with the word bank which really doesnât matter early on but becomes a chore that slows progress later on
Doesnât really do much in the way of correcting errors unless you pay money for the highest level subscription and even then the error correction is weak. A platform like Duolingo has the potential to do really cool error correction; to literally point out the exact error you made and tie it to an explanation. Obviously thatâs difficult especially as things become more challenging but duo has had a decade and millions in development funds, which theyâve spent making the courses actively worse to drive up subscription costs and iaps
The lessons are so focused on the whole âgameificationâ thing that unless you specifically go back to constantly practice vocabulary (and if applicable characters) you will never retain anything. If you merely pound through a Duolingo course from a-b on the prescribed âpathâ you will struggle immensely and forget tons of early vocabulary and grammar concepts that are introduced and then never brought back unless you seek them out. There are âweak skillsâ lessons but they are relatively uncommon so you can feel like youâre constantly progressing
The word banks similarly donât necessarily test retention and just test your ability to do a quick game of matching
Youâll learn something but if you truly want to learn a language there are far more efficient ways. Duolingo is a practice tool at best
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Youâll learn something but if you truly want to learn a language there are far more efficient ways. Duolingo is a practice tool at best
What are some better ways?
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Itâs really hard to beat flash cards. I like Anki a lot because it codifies them and makes the process of âhave I mastered thisâ a bit more streamlined. Though I feel like a lot of people just download premade decks and while thatâs fine you learn a lot making the deck. You canât get around hours of studying vocab and grammar, especially if youâre after the critical period (which I would hope everyone posting here is)
The gameification that Duolingo brings is valuable and very motivating for a lot of people. The problem is that over the years like many capitalist ventures Duolingo made language learning secondary to earning income. So the primary goal of the app suffers at the expense of keeping you constantly engaged so that youâre far more likely to buy shit even if that means ultimately dont learn all that much
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The best language learning system I've found is Language Transfer .
It's free, but it easily beats Duolingo and anything else I have tried (short of total immersion).
I still donate $10/month even though I haven't used it for a while, because I want it to succeed!
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For refugees check out Anki
Like most FOSS it's a little diy but the features that would allow one to create a 90% the-same language learning experience are all there. There also may already be decks that powerful on ankiweb.
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Yup, left Duolingo at the start of this year and broke my 1500+ day streak. Because the AI slop was terrible. From nonsensical language to math questions that were flat-out wrong, I just saw zero benefit to continuing to give them money.
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You can tell all of the new content is written by AI. It suuuuuuucks.
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Isn't Duolingo nonprofit? What's the problem in cutting jobs?
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No. Duolingo is a for-profit company.
And even if they were a non-profit org, cutting jobs isn't a good thing. It's sometimes an unfortunate necessity.
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31 comments
Welp...
Bye Bye Duolingo...
There goes my French practice...
No way shall I support your use of so-called AI to theoretically reduce your costs while enshittifying my experience and enshittifying the planet's ecosystem.
FFS.
đ€·ââïž đ€Ą đ đ
I'm on Day 189 of Spanish. RIP duo.
My brother in owl, I'm on 3249.
The bird really did die
Also, how do I know I'm learning (language) anymore and not just unknowingly learning some completely incorrect halucinated version of (language)
Join francophone Lemmy communities