While Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn was loudly criticized this year after declaring that Duolingo would become an โAI-first company,โ he suggested in a new interview the real issue was that he โdid not give enough context.โ
โInternally, this was not controversial,โ von Ahn told The New York Times. โExternally, as a publicly traded company some people assume that itโs just for profit. Or that weโre trying to lay off humans. And that was not the intent at all.โ
On the contrary, von Ahn said the company has โnever laid off any full-time employeesโ and has no intention of doing so. And while he didnโt deny that Duolingo had cut its contractor workforce, he suggested that โfrom the beginning โฆ our contractor workforce has gone up and down depending on needs.โ
Despite the criticism (which does not seem to have made a big impact on Duolingoโs bottom line), von Ahn still sounds extremely bullish about A.I.โs potential, with Duolingo team members taking every Friday morning to experiment with the technology.
โItโs a bad acronym, f-r-A-I-days,โ he said. โI donโt know how to pronounce it.โ
