Whereas Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn was loudly criticized this yr after declaring that Duolingo would turn into an “AI-first firm,” he steered in a brand new interview the true subject was that he “didn’t give sufficient context.”
“Internally, this was not controversial,” von Ahn informed The New York Instances. “Externally, as a publicly traded firm some folks assume that it’s only for revenue. Or that we’re making an attempt to put off people. And that was not the intent in any respect.”
Quite the opposite, von Ahn mentioned the corporate has “by no means laid off any full-time workers” and has no intention of doing so. And whereas he didn’t deny that Duolingo had lower its contractor workforce, he steered that “from the start … our contractor workforce has gone up and down relying on wants.”
Regardless of the criticism (which doesn’t appear to have made a huge impact on Duolingo’s backside line), von Ahn nonetheless sounds extraordinarily bullish about A.I.’s potential, with Duolingo staff members taking each Friday morning to experiment with the expertise.
“It’s a nasty acronym, f-r-A-I-days,” he mentioned. “I don’t know find out how to pronounce it.”