Duolingo jumps aboard the 'AI-first' train, will phase out contractors

Luis von Ahn says small quality hits are a price worth paying to ride the wave

Duolingo has become the latest tech outfit to attempt to declare itself 'AI-first,' with CEO Luis von Ahn telling staff the biz hopes to gradually phase out contractors for work neural networks can take over.

In the letter, which Duolingo shared on LinkedIn, von Ahn told employees the language-learning outfit would "gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle," warning that "small hits on quality" were an acceptable price to pay for moving quickly in the AI arms race.

This isn't the first time the Pittsburgh-based biz has begun cutting contractors in favor of AI, having started shedding content creation roles last year — a move von Ahn referenced in his latest letter.

The CEO didn't explain in the letter which teams or projects would be affected by this latest round of replacing contractors with AI, and Duolingo didn't respond to questions for this story.

In addition to the contractor cuts, Duolingo said it's also going to begin evaluating AI use for hiring and employee performance reviews. The letter also explained that new roles would only be approved if a team can prove that the work couldn't be automated, in a nod to a similar policy announced by Shopify's CEO, and that initiatives would be forthcoming to "fundamentally change" how "most functions" at the company work.

As Duolingo echoed last year when we reported its contractor reduction in favor of AI, the outfit maintains that it's doing so for the benefit of its employees.

We'd rather move with urgency and take occasional small hits on quality than move slowly and miss the moment

"This isn't about replacing Duos with AI," von Ahn said, "It's about removing bottlenecks so we can do more … we want you to focus on creative work and real problems, not repetitive tasks."

The letter also states the language learning firm is embracing AI the same way it embraced a mobile-first approach more than a decade ago, a move that von Ahn said was pivotal to the language-learning outfit's success.

"Betting on mobile made all the difference," von Ahn explained in the letter. "We're making a similar call now, and this time the platform shift is AI."

The Duolingo chief further explained that he didn't consider AI to be "just a productivity boost," but a whole new way of doing business that means the company will need to rethink much of how its systems are structured, not just integrate AI into existing processes.

"In many cases, we'll need to start from scratch," von Ahn explained. He noted that some elements of the transformation will take time, but stressed that Duolingo wasn't going to wait for AI to be perfect before jumping in.

"We'd rather move with urgency and take occasional small hits on quality than move slowly and miss the moment," von Ahn noted.

Whether AI will have the massive success that Duolingo expects it to bring to the company is questionable: A recent paper found that AI has had minimal impact on jobs or wages, suggesting that massive AI investments aren't having the economic impact that companies have expected. 

One finding from the researchers was that the actual time savings from AI tools were far smaller than expected, with users reporting only a 2.8 percent reduction in work hours – raising the question of whether Duolingo is ultimately wasting its employees' time by pressuring them to adopt a tool with little real-world evidence of its promised benefits. ®