{"id":859170,"date":"2025-06-30T19:13:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T00:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/duolingos-ceo-says-workers-need-a-mind-shift-about-ai\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T19:13:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T00:13:18","slug":"duolingos-ceo-says-workers-need-a-mind-shift-about-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/duolingos-ceo-says-workers-need-a-mind-shift-about-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Duolingo’s CEO says workers need a ‘mind shift’ about AI"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How do you say \u201cautomation\u201d in Spanish?<\/p>\n

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Suggested Reading<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

Duolingo (DUOL<\/a>) CEO Luis von Ahn sparked backlash last month when he wrote in\u00a0an all-hands company email<\/a>\u00a0that the popular language-learning app was going to be \u201cAI-first.\u201d That email, when posted on LinkedIn (MSFT<\/a>), drew hundreds of comments, many from users worried about what that meant for the company\u2019s employees \u2014 and their 1,000-day streaks.<\/p>\n

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Related Content<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

Now, von Ahn has walked back some of his comments,\u00a0telling The Financial Times<\/a>\u00a0that the move to being AI-first wasn\u2019t about mass layoffs but about rethinking how work gets done.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a mind shift that people first try AI,\u201d he said. \u201cIt may be that AI doesn\u2019t actually solve the problem you\u2019re trying to solve\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009that\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Duolingo, which has\u00a0over 10 million paying subscribers<\/a>, will be incorporating AI across the company, from content creation to internal tools. Von Ahn said that with AI, adding a language offering, which was once a labor-intensive process, could soon be done in a fraction of the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou no longer do the details and are more of a creative director,\u201d he told The Financial Times. \u201cFor the vast majority of jobs, this is what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a \u201cvery small number of hourly contractors\u201d doing \u201crepetitive\u201d work were phased out (some were offered other roles), von Ahn has said the company isn\u2019t firing staff left and right. He clarified in\u00a0a recent LinkedIn post<\/a>\u00a0that AI wouldn\u2019t replace employees and that Duolingo was \u201ccontinuing to hire at the same speed as before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know exactly what\u2019s going to happen with AI, but I do know it\u2019s going to fundamentally change the way we work, and we have to get ahead of it,\u201d he wrote. \u201cTo be clear: I do not see AI as replacing what our employees do. … I see it as a tool to accelerate what we do, at the same or better level of quality. And the sooner we learn how to use it, and use it responsibly, the better off we will be in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other companies are increasingly using AI to automate aspects of jobs, and von Ahn told The Financial Times that Duolingo was simply more transparent about its push to build AI into its workflow \u2014 and underestimated how people would react.<\/p>\n

Duolingo\u2019s growth has remained strong: In the first fiscal quarter, revenue rose 38% year-over-year to $230 million and net income hit $35 million. The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based company is also expanding into other learning areas, including music, math, and chess. But while the company\u2019s stock is up over 53% year-to-date, it has seen its shares fall a bit since von Ahn\u2019s original comments about AI \u2014 and the resulting backlash from customers.<\/p>\n

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???? Sign up for the Daily Brief<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Shannon Carroll
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you say \u201cautomation\u201d in Spanish? Suggested Reading Duolingo (DUOL) CEO Luis von Ahn sparked backlash last month when he wrote in\u00a0an all-hands company email\u00a0that the popular language-learning app was going to be \u201cAI-first.\u201d That email, when posted on LinkedIn (MSFT), drew hundreds of comments, many from users worried about what that meant for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":859171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79752,198],"tags":[144981,5910],"class_list":{"0":"post-859170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-duolingos","8":"category-workers","9":"tag-duolingos","10":"tag-workers"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}