Is Duolingo the face of an AI jobs crisis?

Duolingo introduced plans this week to switch contractors with AI and become an “AI-first” company — a transfer that journalist Brian Merchant pointed to as an indication that the AI jobs disaster “is right here, now.”

The truth is, Service provider spoke to a former Duolingo contractor who stated this isn’t even a brand new coverage. The corporate cut around 10% of its contractor workforce on the finish of 2023, and Service provider stated there was one other spherical of cuts in October 2024. In each circumstances, contractors (first translators, then writers) have been changed with AI.

Service provider additionally famous reporting in The Atlantic round the unusually high unemployment rate for recent college graduates. One clarification? Firms is perhaps changing entry-level white collar jobs with AI, or their spending on AI would possibly merely be “crowding out” the spending for brand new hires.

This disaster, Service provider wrote, is absolutely “a sequence of administration selections being made by executives searching for to chop labor prices and consolidate management of their organizations,” and it’s manifesting as “attrition in artistic industries, the declining revenue of freelance artists, writers, and illustrators, and in firms’ inclination to easily rent fewer human staff.”

“The AI jobs disaster isn’t any kind of SkyNet-esque robotic jobs apocalypse — it’s DOGE firing tens of thousands of federal employees whereas waving the banner of ‘an AI-first strategy,’” he added.