This Language Learning Company Is Cutting Staff – and Promoting AI

Duolingo slashes contract staff as it pivots to artificial intelligence.

With the watercooler and Slack conversations about artificial intelligence replacing human workers bubbling up, here’s news of another company cutting workers and replacing them with AI.

This time it’s Duolingo, the learning language translation company, which has made it hay by offering 30 new language translation services throughout its “bite-size” online game-style training sessions.

The firm confirmed this week it had laid off 10% of its independent contractors and is one of the rare companies that admits it’s about elevating AI at the expense of human staffers. Going forward, Duolingo will rely on OpenAI’s GPT-4 to handle not only its translation service but its content production, too.

A Reddit was the first to break the news, with Reddit/No_Comb_4582 sharing an email from Duolingo human relations asking laid-off contractors to complete a short “exit survey” on their way out the door.

“The reason [Duolingo] gave is that AI can come up with content and translations, alternative translations, and pretty much anything else translators did,” the Reddit user said in a recent post. “They kept a couple of people on each team and called them content curators. They simply check the AI crap that gets produced and then push it through.”

Not Exactly a Layoff?

Duolingo told Tech Crunch this week that the contractor departures weren’t layoffs, but a basic matter of not extending contracts to independent contractors after their assigned projects were completed.

One quote stands out in the TechCrunch story, as a Duolingo spokesperson said some contractors were let go because of “improvements to content creation operations” that no longer require as many people to do the work.

TechCrunch also reported Duolingo plans to leverage ChatGPT to handle sentence translation with human “language experts” standing by to provide oversight on the AI-powered product language translation proficiency.

The company will also tap GPT-4 to provide upgraded services for premium subscription subscribers like offering feedback on language translation outcomes and helping subscribers practice their translation lingo.

It’s no secret that career professional are getting anxious over AI taking their jobs. A recent CNBC study noted that 42% of survey respondents are “worried about AI negatively impacting their jobs.”

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