Duolingo lays off huge numbers in favour of AI translators

This will soon turn into a PR exercise for DuoLingo ... or in fact it's been mis-reported in the first place. I've just seen the following:

Duolingo has contacted us following the publication of this news to provide us with some details about the layoffs, which clarifies the current situation a bit. This is what they tell us from the American company:

“We can confirm that some Duolingo workers have not been renewed upon the completion of their projects at the end of 2023. But these are not layoffs. This affected a small minority of Duolingo workers, as the majority have been retained,’ their communication agency explains.

Thus, what becomes clear is that Duolingo has not actively fired the translators, but rather did not renew certain parts of the staff after completing their assignments. Undoubtedly, the situation is quite different from what was initially portrayed.

-- https://nitter.net/Originals_in/status/1744397019475550318

Regardless, DuoLingo was one prong of a five pronged approach for me, and I'm looking to augment or replace. Now investigating Busuu to swap in.

The phandroid url appears to be gone, but the original Reddit post is still up: https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/18sx06i/big_layof...

This is really cold.

- Layoff during a time when employees should be relaxing and resting

- Executing the layoff covertly

- Replacing humans with AI bots

- Pulling the rug from under customers (leaked AI replacement with no official announcement)

How lovely. I can't see how this plays out well for Duolingo. I was actually considering getting a paid account in the new year, but now, not so much.

They've killed their own business model

If the tutorials aren't structured and translated by natives, there's no point paying for Duolingo, might as well cut the middleman and ask ChatGPT directly.