Duolingo’s office in Pittsburgh is playful and bright, like the language-learning app itself.
Inside a production studio, half a dozen social media managers were giddily filming videos featuring the app’s green owl mascot that users know for its many nudges and prompts to complete their lessons. Duolingo’s cheerful social media platforms are replete with videos of young people (and owls) performing the latest viral dance moves.
But lately, those pages haven’t been as lighthearted.
A few months ago, Luis von Ahn, the chief executive and a founder of Duolingo, sent a memo proclaiming that the company would become “A.I.-first.” That meant there would be new hires only if managers could prove that artificial intelligence could not do the job.
Many Duolingo users pushed back. How could a company built on helping people communicate rely on a technology lacking a human touch? And why not just ask a chatbot directly for language lessons instead of paying for an app that’s powered by A.I.?
In an interview at Duolingo’s headquarters, Mr. von Ahn said he took responsibility for the confusion about the use of A.I. at his company.
“In fact, we’re hiring at the same speed as we were hiring before,” Mr. von Ahn, 46, said. “You saw a lot of the interns. We have employees!” (The company employs 1,000 people, including nearly 50 summer interns.)
He was confident that Duolingo, which both uses A.I. and is threatened by it, could keep people at the center of its mission. The company had 130 million monthly active users at the end of June, up more than 20 percent from the previous year. Founded in 2011, Duolingo now has a market value around $15 billion.
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The post The C.E.O. of Duolingo Wants to Have a Conversation About A.I. appeared first on New York Times.
