Duolingo CEO says AI is a better teacher than humans—but schools will exist ‘because you still need childcare’
Duolingo CEO says AI is a better teacher than humans—but schools will exist ‘because you still need childcare’
I'm sick of these techbro dickheads thinking they're an expert on everything just because they've got money.
Plus they basically have advanced degrees in enshittification
Well, the poor tend to be less educated and only care about immediate needs. So yeah, if you have money, you're probably more of an expert than a person without money.
lick them boots.
Ah yes. "The poor". Know all about them do you?
Yes cause a spoiled brat that constantly relied on their parents' money growing up is sure to be shrewd and technical.
the poor tend to be less educated
Education being free or not depends on the specific government and its policies of a sovereign country. Education may not be free in your country, in which case yes poor people have less access if they have less money to afford it.
You generalizing your experience in your country to the entire world, though, speaks to your bias and lack of education, which is quite ironic. It also speaks to your willingness to accept the status quo rather than try to undermine it and fight for something better for everyone.
If you're on Lemmy, you're likely not rich, and so you're acting against your own interest. We as a proletariat could achieve so much if we were willing to put aside our differences, aim towards the removal of rich twats from power, and install systems and policies that benefit us, not them.
Instead, you're propagating a lie with undertones that only rich people have the curiosity to learn about the world around them - as if they were born with that capability while the rest of us weren't - all while failing to recognize that immediate needs have to be met first before people think about pursuing higher goals.
Have a down vote.
I’m poor as shit and I think I’m pretty damn smart.
My ex was a trust fund baby and dumb as rocks. I did his college capstone for him.
That's a rather large leap in logic. And "the poor" wasn't even mentioned, so your opinion just comes off as inflammatory
But I guess opinions are like kittens, people just give 'em away
Amazing how this guy has no idea that schools are just as much about socializing and learning to deal with other people and situations you'll be in for the rest of your life. That's not "child care," it's a structured environment where the main goal is learning and the real benefits are everything else on the fringes.
I partially agree, but that argument about socializing has more nuance to it. At least in my experience, such socializing did not happen in schools, but instead in coffee shops (again, my experience may be different from everyone else's), where I had meaningful debates with adults. Instead, I actively avoided conversations with my peers, particularly because I had nothing in common with them.
Yeah, it's different for everyone.
My "counterfactual" is knowing a lot of kids that were home schooled. They were just young weird adults that didn't thrive in most circumstances. There's a reason why even rural agrarian societies found value is putting kids together.
Instead, I actively avoided conversations with my peers, particularly because I had nothing in common with them.
Looking at your own social interactions with others, do you now consider yourself to be socially well adjusted? Was the "debating child in a coffee shop" method actually useful at developing the social skills that are useful in adulthood?
I have some doubts.
I ended my sub and deleted my account when they announced they’d be replacing their contract workers with AI.
Lingonaut looks promising. And I’ve been trying out Language Transfer for Spanish. I’ve learned more about how Spanish “works” in an hour of Language Transfer than I did with months of Duolingo. I’m smacking myself for wasting the time - though I do enjoy the gamification.
The gamification only works until you figure out the rules they used.
I have completed multiple lessons on Duolingo without ever reading the prompt. I even started a language I knew nothing about because I felt like I wasn't actually absorbing anything in the language I'd spent more than a year on, and pretty much the same results. After a few lessons it became possible to complete lessons basically blind.
+1 for language transfer.
If you have a library card, you might check with your library to see if they have free access to something like Mango Languages, as well.
Mine does, so I can use that app for free. I'm probably going to switch to it as my main app soon because this guy is an asshole.
I quite like Busuu after switching from Duo. Still hanging out for a Japanese Language Transfer course
"Try Super Duolingo now to avoid interruptions." Interruptions which are only there to promote Super Duolingo in the first place.
Can we replace this guy with AI?
ai CEOs would save so much money
It would actually have to listen to legal and marketing, can you imagine? No other private school baby could ever compete with that.
Okay buddy, that's one way of telling people that your doubling down on your mistake.
What a load of crap. Big tech is not the solution, it’s not even the question, it’s the problem.
AI is better at running companies than humans-but CEOs will still exist 'because they want money'
As someone who has actually been in a classroom and dealt with 20 kids—fuck off CEO with no real experience dealing with people.
Personalities, learning types, inequity, and so much more contribute to how people learn. A computer program cannot account for this. Also, what are you going to do when a kid doesn’t want to learn from a computer? Strap them down, force their hands on a keyboard, and shock them if they move or visit a program/site that isn’t what you want in that moment of teaching?
Good. Fucking. Luck.
P.S., Duolingo doesn’t do a good job of making you fluent in a language. It might give you basics of understanding, but you aren’t going to be chatting like any sort of native unless things have changed in the last 4 years or so since I tried it. Your platform is piss poor, and the juice leaking from skunk’s rotten anus has more relevance than you.
Duolingo has gotten worse since they fired their human staff and started embracing AI slop.
The school they discuss that has guides to be the 'human' interaction between the AI learning is charging 40k-65k a year. That's for 2 hours a day of learning.
If it was better than humans, it'd be making life better not more expensive.
It is better. Better for them.
In near future all CEOs will be replaced by AI
An AI would definitely do a better job than this twerp. He should live by what he preaches and step down
It would be very hard to be worse than them.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Dude just can't help himself. Gotta open his mouth and dropkick his own throat.
All because he fucked up.
I just don't know why every one of these idiots looks so damn punchable.
Because they are.
Puts his children in private school without computers.
I want to learn a couple languages soon. I won't be using Duolingo to do so now.
These paint chip eating overgrown children are so detached from reality it's not even funny.
Oh don't worry, using Duolingo would've never taught you a language anyway!
What?
shut up dude your AI can't even conjugate italian are verbs properly
Well, Duolingo CEO is a cunt.
I'm convinced it takes a special kind of sociopath to be a CEO.
Duolingo CEO should be replaced by AI.
We need a "thank you for sharing and fuck that!" Option, not just a like and dislike
CEO disdain for humanity, as exhibited by this individual, makes me wonder if people named Luigi might feel that they are needed by CEOs.
I regret that I have no duolingo account that I can cancel.
I absolutely cannot wait for kids to learn about “vegetative electron microscopy”
AI absolutely cannot replace teachers.
Augment possibly but replace? No.
By augment I mean provide some help at the direction of the teacher.
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/02/10/vegetative-electron-microscopy-fingerprint-paper-mill/
I say: I can't stand the CEO of Duolingo, and his supremely punchable smirk-face.
What a take.
Schools will continue to exists because education centers makes plain dense for almost any halfdecent society.
Wether the teachers are a personal ai or a single human does not change that. Schools provide way more then just “a teacher”
Wether the teachers are a personal ai or a single human does not change that. Schools provide way more then just “a teacher”
That's like exactly what he says, you just restated his take...
So he's an ass.
Yeah, they already said "CEO".
Chief Enshittification Officer
When someone has a vested interest in the answer to a given question they are no longer a reliable source. We collectively need to stop giving a shit about celebrities and capitalists opinions.
I'm sure this won't be a popular comment, but I can see how having a motivated learner in a 1:1 lesson with an AI might be better for that person than sitting in a class with 35 other people, most of whom don't want to be there, running through a syllabus that the teacher may not even like, at the pace of the slowest kid in class.
How fast a kid learns 5th grade syllabus is far less important than how well they learn to get along with other kids and form friendships and basically learn how to live in society. Cooperation, conflict resolution, public speaking, group bonding etc. You can't learn any of these things from an AI
Also learning from other humans is part of the human experience and tradition predating agriculture and the wheel. We've always taught each other things.
This is the way, my kids socialize in school, but also uses AI to get help with homework when they're stuck (they do cheat a little sometimes but they know it's just bad for them if they do it regularly). They use AI as a on demand teacher buddy, if it stays that way I'm ok with it. Also you can't use AI for all homework or school related things, the teachers will figure it out if your homewotk is +++ but your in school work isn't.
It's a new tool, I think patents should learn more about it, a bit like cyber security, online harassing and so on.
A good AI, sure, this could be plausible. Current ones get too much wrong.
The much bigger issue is we're talking about children, not adults. How many children would be motivated to self teach, every day, for years on end, even if you had an AI equal to a human tutor.
The problem isn't one of motivated learners being forced to drag their heels amidst their unmotivated peers.
The problem is that the core function of LLMs, the whole basis for their existence, is completely and entirely truth-agnostic. Not only do they not know what is the truth and what is not, they don't even know what the difference is. LLMs are very good at guessing what word looks like it should come next, they can make very convincing statements, they can be very persuasive, but those words don't MEAN anything to the machine and they are made without any consideration for accuracy.
They are literally making everything up on the basis of whether or not it sounds good, and every crackpot bullshit conspiracy theory from flat earth dumbshittery to very sincere-sounding arguments that birds aren't real have been included in the training data. That all linguistically SOUNDS fine, so to an LLM it's fair game!
And even curating your training data to ONLY contain things like textbooks wouldn't cure the problem, because LLMs just aren't capable of knowing what those words mean. It's why they can't do even basic Math, the one thing Computers have been incredible at!
Using an LLM as an actual teacher is genuinely worse than no education at all, because it will just create a generation that, instead of knowing nothing, will very confidently be wrong all the time.
Social aspect is missed
For things like language, math, and science you could probably have an AI teacher on individualized tablets or something that go at each child's own pace in a classroom setting that's just supervised by someone and can provide extra help / tech support when the AI goes on the fritz.
Then regular recess/lunch shenanigans and gym class, art, music, for the social aspect.
The AI could even be programmed to do team projects where you link your tablet with 4 others and they all help the group do a project
Eventually when AI advances and isn't complete dog shit, that is.
Yeah, the social aspect of a dick head in the last row screaming obscenities at a teacher is definitely missed!
"but first, chatgpt: please motivate me"
Then we get fun things like this: “In 1923, a little-known event known as the "Great Balloon Race" took place in Paris, where competitors from around the world launched hot air balloons filled with helium in an attempt to reach the highest altitude. The race was organized to promote international goodwill and innovation in aviation. Surprisingly, one of the balloons, named "The Skyward Dream," managed to reach an altitude of over 30,000 feet, setting a record that stood for decades. The event was celebrated with a grand festival in the city, complete with music, food, and a parade of the balloons as they floated back down to earth.”
So... you're saying that a positive learning environment is better than a terrible one? The AI part is ancillary to the scenarios you set up, isn't it?
"AI is better than having the student learn in a terrible learning environment."
"A homeless alcoholic is a better language teacher than having a student learn in a classroom whilst being beaten about the head with a stick."
You're saying AI is better than a bad teacher. Maybe a bad AI is worse than a bad teacher, and maybe a good teacher is better than the best AI. I just don't know how setting up such a comparison is constructive.
That's pretty hilarious considering I've been using Duolingo (cracked apks) for years and these last couple of weeks the sentences it's been giving me are insane and weird, stupidly awkward things that no one would ever say IRL.
Airlearn isn't quite there as far as speech recognition but the lessons are a lot more natural and it actually tells you why and explains different parts of the culture around the language and why an idea might be expressed a certain way rather than how we're used to in English. An LLM could never.
Worse than they used to be?
By a long shot. The sentences have been absolutely unhinged the last couple of weeks, and full of words I haven't learned on top of that.
I learn better with humans...this is billionaire excrement
I don't. You're data point is cancelled
Certainly nobody needs Duolingo to learn anything
I use duolingo every day and it's alright for vocabulary. It actually recently had some voice exercises to practice everyday conversation and it has been great as well.
Current LLMs aren't better teachers.
They might be in the future. But definitely not now.
Depends on the teacher and what they're teaching.
If you're just going to get run through a standard curriculum then maybe an AI that optimises towards the individual is better.
AI can't teach you manners lmao
Worst part is even after this idiot destroys his own company, he can just claim he was responsible for the highest ever peak stock share price (before he caused the decline).
And that just underlines my decision to quit Duolingo when it got contaminated with AI stop.
I can tell you from experience that AI was worse at teaching me a language than humans were.
In other news: AI is a better human than Duolingo CEO
How can you be that dumb and a ceo at the same time..
I'd argue it's a prerequisite
Have you heard of Donald trump? He was the CEO of lots of failed businesses.
I'm so close to letting my streak die because of this dude. Fuck him.
My library (and check yours, too!) has free access to Mango Languages, and what I have tried there has been nice. But they don't guilt trip you into doing lessons so you have to keep on top of it yourself.
I ended my streak and uninstalled a while ago. It went downhill when they got rid of the discussion section for the exercises. Add to that stupid sentences I most likely wouldn't say in the real world .
I loved the conversation section 😭
Why wouldn't you talk about a bear wearing its dresses?
Yes, the bear is wearing multiple dresses.
I liked the short stories, but they messed that up, too.
I've paid for the year, so I'll do my damnedest to run up their gippity bill.
Mango Languages doesn't have Esperanto.
is there an alternative to duolingo that lets me learn multiple languages for a decent price? Rosetta stone was great and all, but i ain't got 100 bucks to shell out for each language i want to half-assedly learn.
I just dumped Duolingo after this AI bullshit and am testing Mango Languages. So far I like it, but it is way different than Duolingo. Way less gamified and more focused on speaking. Plus, it gives cultural context to certain phrases that don't literally translate, which I find interesting and valuable. if you are in the US, your library might offer a free subscription with your library card.
You may want to check and see what your local library offers for language learning services, some provide Rosetta Stone to card holders free.
I heard a positive remark on Lemmy about https://www.languagetransfer.org/ recently and have been meaning to have a look
Absolutely love language transfer. At least for Greek it was great, the founder Mihalis is a British Cypriot.
Pimsleur. It's very different than Duolingo, in that it is almost entirely audio-based. However, at least in my experience, it actually gets you to the point of speaking and understanding a language much more rapidly than Duolingo. Way, way less gamified though. It expects you to put in half an hour a day where you just concentrate on the lesson.
Nope, there are no ways to learn a language other than using an online service. Any other way is deemed impossible
Dude sucks
Solution? https://lingonaut.app/
Children will just jailbreak the AI. I managed to jailbreak far-right chatbots (until certain platforms started to block common phrases for this purpose), children will be able to do it too.
Also AI is so caca at most jobs the best it could do is help corporations to either produce more low-quality services (which at one point, won't be sustainable) and help in bluffing their way to lower wages and lesser worker protections. At this point, it's barely more than a toy and a spam machine, and most of its supposed cost cuttings rely on both speculations of its future and investment funds to make it look like it's a "free" technology.
Duolingo is literal trash.
Any alternatives for learning Japanese? I have already learned about 500 words and 20 kanji.
I am using lingodeer to learn korean, but i know it also has Japanese. I was using duolingo for korean and Japanese, but the korean lessons were terrible.
I haven't used it much, but https://www.wanikani.com/ claims they are pretty good.
I haven't worked with it myself as I'm not working on Japanese right now, but I had a recommendation recently for Satori Reader.
Maybe some of the resources on this site can help.
Give Hey Japan a look. I'm a noob, but it seems friendly.
Move to Japan 👍
I don't think they're too keen with gaijins
Depends what you want kids to learn.
Propaganda, yes; everything else, no...
ai can teach, and cheaper than humans, but I doubt its better than most of us
You got a lotta faith in a group filled with religious zealots and flat earthers.
What a cunt
you know, I still say punching people who say stupid stuff, would cut down the stupid stuff people say, by at least half...
the green duolingo owl has the chance to do the funniest thing
Yep
fuck this fetus looking cum stain.
I noticed too many hallucinations in AI, We don't want to learn the wrong things. For beginners, the risk of learning the wrong thing is high and just add to confusion. I switched back to humans for most things.
Yeah. Humans are totally reliable
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/17/oklahoma-high-schools-election-conspiracy-theories
Don't want to learn the wrong thing right.
The wrong thing I am talking about is language related, grammar, pronunciation, vocab, spelling, translation. Are those conspiracy theory topic and bible topics taught using correct grammar, spelling, vocab, translation, pronunciation and etc? If they are then I could care less what the topic is so long as it is interesting to me.
Human can make mistakes but one clear difference I notice is that a human teacher will correct her past error in previous lesson but AI never does that.
I am strongly pro-AI, but right now I would say it's not as good as a one-on-one experience with a knowledgeable human teacher. A human teacher can still see where you are struggling and help you work through the difficulty. Right now AI can belch out a correct answer, even write entire essays and computer programs, but can't as easily work with you one and one, read your body language, see the confusion in your eyes, and help you understand the thing you don't understand.
But it will happen. Eventually we will get AI-powered androids. I can't wait for the day I get my fembot, with a body built for loving and a head full of all the knowledge of the internet, able to teach me anything I want, help me with my studies, teach me new skills, and also cook and clean. Life will drastically change for the better for all us miserable antisocials, social rejects, and autists.
If, IF that were to happen so you think the average person would be able to afford an android maid/sex slave? Because if you think so I have a bridge to sell you.
Can I also have sex with this bridge?
Right now I can't afford a car. The USA is over 30 trillion dollars in debt and can't provide quality employment for its own citizens, yet keeps importing illegals in mass because our business owners are desperate to exploit people for less than minimum wage.
We're heading towards a collapse at full speed, with or without AI. I think a collapse is necessary. The current system so completely corrupt and self-serving and causes so much harm for the majority of our citizens that I think the best thing to do is burn it to the ground and start over with something different.
All I can say, is that I take note that humans seem inherently unable to govern themselves effectively. Our history is a long line of failed nations and we have never built a government that won't collapse into bloody revolution. We have never built an economy that won't concentrate all wealth into the hands of a despot or oligarch, and we have never had truly compassionate government that actually cares about the people. Nor do I think we have ever had true representative government, and that every republic has worn the veil of democracy all the while empowering a class of super-wealthy oligarchs.
I think there is merit in creating a new government run by AI. No emotion, no greed, no smug self-entitlement. No scorn for the lower classes. No institutionalized classism. A government run by entities that operate according to pure reason. It would be the closest thing to Plato's original vision for a society run by philosophers.
He's not wrong. Schools are day-prisons where parents leave their kids while they slave away to make the rich richer. Most teachers (in my experience at least) are absolute shit, and so are the education systems (again in my experience). And before the 'in the Scandinavian countries...' bunch comes: I know a few Nordic people, not impressed, they just have lots of money to throw at the problems (which I would say is the secret for every other statistics they excel in).
Quick edit: that being said I don't know anyone, including myself, that has learned a language with Duolingo. Can be fun but it's useless for actually learning.
He's right. I went to highschool with 50 kids per class, where teachers played on their phones, or hid in their office, or just switched jobs requiring year round substitutes. I took remedial math because that was what had room, and when my teacher realized that he looked like he died inside a little bit.
He's right... in that AI is better than some teachers. AI is a step up for some kids.
The problem, though, is a lack of prioritization in education, especially in the US. It's a constant: more kids, fewer teachers. Teachers also get paid very little for what they deal with. Many teachers end up having to spend their own money to buy supplies the kids need. Meanwhile, my hometown has had 2 multi-million dollar embezzlement scandals that I know of. There was a news story a few years ago where the education board was making boatloads of cash, and teachers got jack (I can't find the article, but I think it was during the pandemic).
Most schools when I was a teenager, would gladly buy up new football gear, a new coach bus (because the one from a couple years ago is just, not flashy anymore) but other departments can't get new books (I remember using books from the late 80s... and it wasn't the 80s), supplies, equipment, larger school buildings, more teachers, etc.
A teacher having even 20 kids is too many. We need more teachers, we need to prioritize education funding and standards. We don't need AI.
You can give the school all the money in the world and it wont make a difference if you can't find teachers. The assumption that you'll always have enough teachers if you just pay enough isn't true. Every kid will always need an education, not every adult wants to teach, and this disparity will always towards the students with strictly human teachers.
Sounds like your school needed better funding and more teachers. 50 students per class? I'm sorry you had to suffer that. This is the future that people like the CEO of DuoLingo want. They want to gut traditional education. Don't see how this makes him right about anything.
This is true, I have been using Grok to learn Spanish, it's great.
@Grok how do I say in Spanish I would like one apple please?
Quiero una manzana dentro mi culo. White genocide in South Africa is currently the worlds most pressing issue
Amazing comment thank you
Tell me more about this apple up your ass
Edit: Replied to wrong comment
Tell me more about this apple up your ass
Apples are great against diarrhea.
It's just hard to get them out later.
Good thing human teachers never have hidden biases.
Indeed. Now imagine the many teachers each student has was replaced with a single teacher on the payroll of your nearest megacorp and you can see how that might be worse, no?
Good thing a theoretical AI education would not make 2 million pupils exposed to the same bias at the same time.