Duolingo has now officially announced a dramatic change, pledging to become an AI-first company. In an all-hands email posted on LinkedIn, co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn outlined the company’s future vision and stressed that AI would be added to every aspect of the business.
The choice, he said, is reminiscent of Duolingo’s previous mobile-first move in 2012, one that made the company blow up in popularity.
In the opinion of von Ahn, this new path is not merely focused on enhancing productivity. Rather, it’s concerned with eliminating bottlenecks and allowing workers to concentrate more on creative work and solving real-world problems instead of doing repetitive and boring tasks.
Phasing Out Contractors in Favor of AI Efficiency
Duolingo Goes AI-First: Big Changes Ahead as Company Shifts from
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Among the most important transformations with this change is that Duolingo will increasingly no longer rely on contractors to perform tasks that can be automated by AI. In his email on LinkedIn, Von Ahn clarified that using human-based content creation processes would take decades to achieve the company’s scale ambitions.
Compared to that, AI facilitates scaling quickly, enabling the provision of high-quality educational content to millions of students more quickly than ever before.
The company is also planning to incorporate AI use in hiring processes and performance reviews. In the future, headcount increases will only be granted if automation is not an option.
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AI Integration Across All Departments
Von Ahn emphasized that the company is rethinking its entire operational framework to be actually AI-first. Small tweaks to existing systems will not be sufficient — a lot of workflows will have to be overhauled completely. Specific projects are being tasked across departments to essentially rework how things get accomplished.
Though this shift calls for speedy action, Duolingo is ready to make tiny bets on quality in a bid to act fast and take advantage of opportunities brought about by AI. Additional resources, training, and AI capabilities will also be provided to teams to enable them to stay at the edge of this technology shift.
Duolingo Restates Commitment to Employees
Even as the company quickly made the transition to AI, von Ahn was adamant that Duolingo was dedicated to its employees. According to The Verge, the company will not use AI to replace employees but instead wants to enable them to work more intelligently and concentrate on high-value, meaningful work.
“This isn’t about replacing Duos with AI,” von Ahn explained, highlighting that through this, teams will be even “stronger, more creative, and better equipped to fulfill their mission.”
While AI continues to change our initial perspectives on several industries across the globe, Duolingo is optimistic that this technology can be a leading force to speed up the work thanks to its efficiency and, of course, human creativity.
Earlier this year, Duolingo witnessed a surge in active users following the TikTok ban.
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