{"id":187432,"date":"2025-08-17T16:34:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T16:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/17\/duolingo-ceo-says-controversial-ai-memo-was-misunderstood-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T16:34:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T16:34:17","slug":"duolingo-ceo-says-controversial-ai-memo-was-misunderstood-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/17\/duolingo-ceo-says-controversial-ai-memo-was-misunderstood-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Duolingo CEO says controversial AI memo was misunderstood | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn was loudly criticized this year after <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/04\/30\/duolingo-launches-148-courses-created-with-ai-after-sharing-plans-to-replace-contractors-with-ai\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">declaring that Duolingo would become an \u201cAI-first company,\u201d<\/a> he suggested in a new interview the real issue was that he \u201cdid not give enough context.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cInternally, this was not controversial,\u201d<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/08\/17\/business\/duolingo-luis-von-ahn.html\" target=\"_blank\"> von Ahn told The New York Times<\/a>. \u201cExternally, as a publicly traded company some people assume that it\u2019s just for profit. Or that we\u2019re trying to lay off humans. And that was not the intent at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the contrary, von Ahn said the company has \u201cnever laid off any full-time employees\u201d and has no intention of doing so. And while he didn\u2019t deny that Duolingo had <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/05\/04\/is-duolingo-the-face-of-an-ai-jobs-crisis\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cut its contractor workforce<\/a>, he suggested that \u201cfrom the beginning \u2026 our contractor workforce has gone up and down depending on needs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite the criticism (which <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/08\/07\/the-backlash-against-duolingo-going-ai-first-didnt-even-matter\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">does not seem to have made a big impact<\/a> on Duolingo\u2019s bottom line), von Ahn still sounds extremely bullish about A.I.\u2019s potential, with Duolingo team members taking every Friday morning to experiment with the technology.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s a bad acronym, f-r-A-I-days,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to pronounce it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/08\/17\/duolingo-ceo-says-controversial-ai-memo-was-misunderstood\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn was loudly criticized this year after declaring that Duolingo would become an \u201cAI-first company,\u201d he suggested in a new interview the real issue was that he \u201cdid not give enough context.\u201d \u201cInternally, this was not controversial,\u201d von Ahn told The New York Times. \u201cExternally, as a publicly traded company [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":187433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-187432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}