Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn was criticised loudly this year after declaring Duolingo to become “AI-First Company,” but he suggested in a new interview that the real problem was “did not give sufficient context.”
“Internally, this was uncontroversial,” von Ann told The New York Times. “Externally, as a public company, some people think it’s just for profit. Or we’re trying to fire people. That wasn’t the intention at all.”
On the contrary, Von Ahn said the company “has never fired a full-time employee” and said it would not do so. And he did not deny that Duolingo had cut the contractor’s workforce, but he proposed that “from the start… the contractor’s workforce rose and fell according to the needs.”
Despite criticism (it doesn’t seem to have had a major impact on Duolingo’s revenue), Von Ahn sounds very bullish about Ai’s potential. Duolingo team members take you to experiment with technology every Friday morning.
“That’s a bad acronym, Frai-Days,” he said. “I don’t know how to pronounce it.”
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