Whereas Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn was loudly criticized this yr after declaring that Duolingo would grow to be an “AI-first firm,” he advised in a brand new interview the actual situation was that he “didn’t give sufficient context.”
“Internally, this was not controversial,” von Ahn informed The New York Occasions. “Externally, as a publicly traded firm some folks assume that it’s only for revenue. Or that we’re attempting to put off people. And that was not the intent in any respect.”
Quite the opposite, von Ahn stated the corporate has “by no means laid off any full-time staff” and has no intention of doing so. And whereas he didn’t deny that Duolingo had reduce its contractor workforce, he advised 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 workforce members taking each Friday morning to experiment with the expertise.
“It’s a nasty acronym, f-r-A-I-days,” he stated. “I don’t know the best way to pronounce it.”
