Duolingo CEO says controversial AI memo was misunderstood

Whereas Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn was loudly criticized this 12 months after declaring that Duolingo would become an “AI-first company,” he prompt in a brand new interview the true subject was that he “didn’t give sufficient context.”

“Internally, this was not controversial,” von Ahn told The New York Times. “Externally, as a publicly traded firm some folks assume that it’s only for revenue. Or that we’re making an attempt 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 cut its contractor workforce, he prompt that “from the start … our contractor workforce has gone up and down relying on wants.”

Regardless of the criticism (which does not seem to have made a big impact on Duolingo’s backside line), von Ahn nonetheless sounds extraordinarily bullish about A.I.’s potential, with Duolingo group 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 right way to pronounce it.”