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[–][deleted]  (114 children)

[removed]

    [–]grasimasi 88 points89 points  (7 children)

    ah good. thats reason enough to not buy super. f them

    [–]alejandroglezf 27 points28 points  (5 children)

    I was thinking about purchasing but it held me back the fact that the Greek course is pretty underdeveloped, with no signs of being updated. Then I found this. I am glad I didn’t get the super.

    [–]s3mj 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    Good news then, the Greek course will be developed by robots with no real understanding of the complexities and nuances of human language, yay! /s

    [–]ElGrell 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    Yeah, I tried it a year and a half ago, it was unbearable. As someone who knows the tiniest bit of Greek (like hi-thanks-bye), as well as Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, I was only able to get by thanks to those. It literally teaches you the Greek alphabet wrong (or at least it did a year+ ago), mixing the look and the sound of letters all the time 🤦‍♀️ I was better off purchasing a 15c "handy phrases" booklet than learning it on Duo. Also found another app, (I didn't see any rules against competitors on the sub, but I'd like to help those who want to learn languages Duo underdevelops) Mango Languages and liked their approach a lot better (more cultural context, actual tools to look over the materials like vocabulary, all the audio sounds human not generated)

    [–]halloween-is-erryday 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    How does their Russian course compare to Duo's?

    I'm noticing the Russian course is tiny compared to the Spanish, and even the Norwegian course. It's very condensed. I'd like to gain better proficiency in both Russian and Norwegian, if Mango has those courses.

    I'm really glad I've found this post, because I noticed the quality of the app has really gone downhill in the past 6ish months or so, and this explains it.

    [–]ElGrell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Idk, man, never learned russian but I heard their Ukrainian is at least decent

    [–]lgxNative: Learning: 🇮🇹 161 points162 points  (51 children)

    Sorry to hear about this and as a longtime Duolingo user I really thank you for your work at Duolingo. But, unfortunately, AI will beat humans in translation sooner or later.

    [–]third-acc 206 points207 points  (37 children)

    Maybe, but that later is not now. Currently, they just sacrificed their products quality for money

    [–]tofuroll 85 points86 points  (23 children)

    If it's being reviewed by humans, I presume the final product must be approved by humans. In which case, there should be no decline in quality.

    However, there's a difference between a human coming up with their own translation and a human starting with an AI's translation. You could also argue that the human's hand is forced, that their parameters are narrowed to whatever the AI has given you to work with.

    I'd explain it as being somewhat akin to the sense that it's easier to start from scratch than to unravel someone else's mess.

    [–]third-acc 54 points55 points  (17 children)

    I would argue that there will be, because you are more likely to nod off a phrase that is okay, even if that is not how it would have naturally come to you.

    [–]StellarSteals 27 points28 points  (12 children)

    Tbh handmade translations were also weird sometimes, often in (German) discussion people would criticise how unnatural certain sentences were

    [–]ArktinusNative: SL Learning: 16 points17 points  (4 children)

    I would imagine that being because speaking two or more languages doesn't make you a (good) translator. It takes much more than that. And people who made those sentences/translations were (mostly) volunteers.

    [–]jrd803 8 points9 points  (2 children)

    The more I study languages other than my mother tongue (English) I realize that to actually translate things accurately a person needs to be fluent in both languages and understanding both cultures.

    For instance, I have found that the Google translator does reasonably well on simple sentences, but its accuracy sometimes veers off course on more complex sentence structures. So I try to keep the English simple before applying the translator.

    [–]SkintCrayon 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    As a fluent speaker of two languages I can tell you that accurate translating is extremely nuanced.

    Google will do well to translate the meaning but the tone of the sentence if often affected by translation

    [–]Aim2bFit 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    It was claimed that the translators are Americans (English native speakers) on the German Duolingo but quite a number of English answers were very unnatural sounding. And I hate it now the old discussions were removed.

    [–]StellarSteals 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I miss them dearly, but tbh (a few chapters in) most discussions only had a few dozens upvotes at most compared to millions of learners in Duo, so I get why they thought they weren't popular

    Except in meme discussions, discussions about phrases like "I have hidden my grandma" lol those were popular

    [–]StrangeBarnacleBloke 10 points11 points  (3 children)

    And if the AI presents 6 different options plus a “none of these” option that generates 6 more? People seem to think AI will just be a direct swap in for the human task, but it’s so much more capable than that with human oversight

    [–]hwynacNative /Fluent / Learning 12 points13 points  (1 child)

    I am more worried about a LLM's ability to create human-readable translations. Let's imagine a simple sentence about a person sometimes sleeping at work with its set of translations. I will also pretend our L1 is like Hungarian, so "he" and "she" are the same.

    ​

    • [He/She] [sometimes/occasionally] [sleeps/dozes/naps/takes a nap/takes naps/has a nap] at work.
    • [He/She] is [sometimes/occasionally] [asleep/dozing/napping/taking a nap/taking naps/having a nap] at work.
    • [He/She] [sometimes/occasionally][ is/'s] [asleep/dozing/napping/taking a nap/taking naps/having a nap] at work.
    • [Sometimes/Occasionally/Now and then/Once in a while/Every so often/From time to time] [he/she] [sleeps/dozes/naps/takes a nap/takes naps/has a nap] at work.
    • [He/She] [sleeps/dozes/naps/takes a nap/takes naps/has a nap] at work [sometimes/occasionally/now and then/once in a while/every so often/from time to time].
    • [He/She] is [asleep/dozing/napping/taking a nap/taking naps/having a nap] at work [sometimes/occasionally/now and then/once in a while/every so often/from time to time].

    It is somewhat of an eyesore but a contributor with some experience can check it in a minute or two. For instance, you can see that "Sometimes/Occasionally..."-initial options do not have progressive translations; those should be added. This is the way Duolingo has been working since day one (I hope so).

    If you instead get an explicit printout of acceptable translations (312 lines), in no specific order, checking coverage is difficult. Letting in a mistake when reading through that wall of text is also non-zero, as it always has been. So you should hope checking is also done by an AI. Oh, wait, that is how those language models work in the first place...

    As of now, Chat GPT is poor at providing a list of consistent translations for a sentence, and very poor at grouping them into a compact human-checkable form I shown above. I mean, it works for some simple sentences but fails for others and keeps failing even as you point at lacunas and mistakes.

    However, I hope that some day, a custom-trained model will be able to quickly generate a neat list indeed. Inexperienced human contractors are not super good at that either, and we are definitely slower than AI when we have to modify hundreds of sentences in a consistent way.

    [–]will_i_be_pretty 9 points10 points  (0 children)

    The solution to that is to actually pay experienced translators. The entire field is in freefall right now and it is entirely down to cheapskate corporations who don't give a fuck if their output is even readable, let alone accurate.

    I am tired of pretending that "hire someone who knows what they're doing and give them enough money to do it" is some unfathomable and impossible task in an era where the rich continue to rake in more money than in the entire history of humanity.

    You can grind up as many monkeys on typewriters as you want, but it's not going to replace a human because it is literally impossible. There's no such thing as "AI", it's all just statistical models with zero comprehension of anything you give it. You have been sold a lie by greedy corporations, and there is no better version on the horizon, just burning more and more rainforest to roll more and more dice. That's it. Don't accept their premises.

    [–]hwynacNative /Fluent / Learning 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Here is a more or less successful example of a compact set of translations, though it took me a couple minutes to make ChatGPT write it like that. So it definitely works as a concept.

    <image>

    [–]Gyrfalcon63 11 points12 points  (0 children)

    You assume it's still being reviewed. It might be on the OP's former team, but when they laid me off in July (also a long-time contractor), there was nobody left on the team for my course, and really nobody who would be able to check anything they might have AI do with it in the future...assuming anything ever gets done on it at all, which is a big assumption. It's unfortunate, but it's just the way the company is run. One can do little in this world but chase the almighty dollar, I suppose. :(

    [–]slightly2spooked 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    ‘Reviewed by humans’ means that the AI spits out nonsense that the human must then almost completely rewrite for a fraction of the pay.

    [–]partofbreakfast 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Wouldn't four humans doing translations do more than two humans reviewing AI translations? They can't be saving that much time by just "reviewing" the translations.

    [–]Meirnon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Halving your workforce, docking their compensation and career path because they're no longer translators but now "reviewers" with a less prestigious title with fewer opportunities for advancement, and asking them to have the same amount of throughput is going to create a decline in quality.

    At the moment, AI translation is dogshit. It takes just as much, if not more, work to "review" an AI translated piece of work, because often you're going back to the source language and then retranslating it into its correct form anyways - it's your old job plus an extra step of having to see what horrid approximation that a machine spat out first. And now you have to do your work and your fired co-worker's work on the same deadline you used to.

    It's going to create a decline in quality.

    [–]Captain_Chickpeas 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    Well, even the later is going to take a while, because so far a language model would have to be versed in many languages and even ChatGPT struggles with gendered languages.

    [–]Peroerko 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    it can be competition but i still make mistakes and someone has to give ai more reources so still not so fast and not completely

    [–]Unusual-Language53 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Large Language Models cannot “beat” human translation. Literally.

    [–]BrokenKeel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    so why are you wasting time learning a language then?

    [–]Dapper_Calculator 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    They could wait until it actually does beat humans rather than switching to it while it's crap.

    [–]Affectionate-Ad-479 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I don't agree. AI has a notoriously poor understanding of spoken language, spoken language is the core of learning -- think about ChatGPT writing. The model of a language will never map onto the experience of a language

    [–]BaalHammon 2 points3 points  (2 children)

    AI translation is garbage and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Source : I'm a linguist and an NLP practitioner.

    [–]FightLikeABlue 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Agreed. I'm a translator and I do MTPE as part of my job, and some of the machine/AI translations I get are so bad I may as well have done the bastard thing from scratch myself.

    [–]WonderfulWanderer777 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    How the hell something that fundamentally doesn't understands or needs any form of real communication or has anything to communicate will be better than the being that has that as a need drilled into them again?

    [–]Anxious_Blacksmith88 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I learned German starting with Duolingo and ended up going to Lingoda for a personal tutor. I found a lot of the structure of programs like Duolingo to be lacking and an actual course with a native speaker was vastly superior. If anything Duolingo needs more human translators and an ability to hook in to a 1 on 1 or group lesson format with an actual teacher.

    Instead it looks like they have decided to cheap out before they slowly die.

    [–]Hello_WhoIsThis 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    If you still have contact with the remaining two, tell them to start declining the "good ones" and just start accepting the messed up, broken ones, it'll be funny

    [–]indigo_dragons 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Sorry to hear that. It looks like your post has helped to break the story:

    https://uk.pcmag.com/ai/150389/as-duolingo-taps-ai-for-translation-human-contractors-lose-their-jobs

    I got wind of this from r/languagelearning's post here.

    [–]FightLikeABlue 3 points4 points  (2 children)

    Wow. That explains everything. Duolingo is awful these days - I don't know why they had to add that stupid tree structure. Instead of doing specific subjects or drilling grammar and tenses, it's just the SAME BLOODY SENTENCES OVER AND OVER. (I'm referring to Italian.)

    [–]super-cool_username 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    What does that have to do with letting translators go?

    [–]FightLikeABlue 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    The quality has dropped because of them throwing translators under the bus.

    [–]rad-1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Have you tried or any colleagues heard about this? Or seriously considered it? Theyve had big wins outside the US but not sure about inside

    https://techworkerscoalition.org/

    [–]latehove comment score below threshold-20 points-19 points  (0 children)

    Did you ever call a Uber or similar? If you did I can't have no sympathy whatsoever for what is happening to you. Good luck anyway.

    [–]saynotopuddingLearning Native 🇲🇾 453 points454 points  (5 children)

    I like and value the human aspect of language exchange and learning, and I think that there's nuances in languages that AI can't fully replicate (at least as of now). Even if these nuances might not necessarily be reflected in Duolingo's content (because it's not the most comprehensive language learning tool out there), I can't help but still feel a little sad.

    Tbh Duolingo has gradually removed a lot of its good features over the years (give me back my forums damnit) so i'm also not too surprised with this turn of events.

    I'm sorry about your job, and I wish you all the best in your future endeavours!

    [–]rad-1 24 points25 points  (2 children)

    I kiss forums too

    [–]SipTime 24 points25 points  (1 child)

    i kiss forum with u

    [–]ElGrell 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    It especially sucks for languages out of, like, top 10. I tried several languages like Greek and Turkish on there but they're miles behind popular languages like Japanese. And even there I keep encountering problems like generated voice mispronouncing things or having weird "Siri laughing" moments (ಠ_ಠ)

    [–]EquilateralProphecy 94 points95 points  (10 children)

    What matters is that this is a trend that is going to ravage the job markets starting...now. I suspect 2024, we are going to see this story almost daily. It's going to make things that much tougher on people trying to build their careers.

    [–]broem86 20 points21 points  (7 children)

    This is exactly what is and will continue to happen. Who cares if customers are a little pissed about communications? We saved a few bucks!

    [–]afraidtobecrate 15 points16 points  (5 children)

    If customers really hate it, then this just opens the door for "human only" competitors.

    Although if customers generally don't care and its a loud minority complaining, then yeah AI will take over.

    [–]Anxious_Blacksmith88 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    Well the problem is those customers will be dealing with the same thing. Customer is not some vocation... that person has a job. So they scroll down reddit and see oh they laid off the guys working on that language learning app for AI that sucks.... and then they walk into a meeting held by some tech consultant about how they can make their employees lives easier with AI! Then that person gets laid off six months later. See the problem here?

    [–]HostInternational293 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    There is a misconception here. We, as customers, are not interested in Duolingo itself or learning English as such, we are interested in the ability to communicate with other people in their language. And if AI gives us this opportunity faster and cheaper, then no Dualingo is needed at all (as well as Google Translate or other similar applications).

    [–]nibselfib_kyua_72 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    we need a subreddit that tracks these occurrences

    [–]No_Comb_4582[S] 197 points198 points  (6 children)

    Thank you all for your Thoughtful answers. This is such a cool community. Glad I joined! ❤️

    [–]WittyRocket 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    Agreed.

    Came across this thread because I wondered how in the world did [DOUL] IPO grew so fast... Now I understand. Sorry about your job, but I hope you at least had stock options.

    I never feel good about investing into companies that treat their employees this way.

    [–]GeorgeTheFunnyOneModerator 3 points4 points  (4 children)

    u/No_Comb_4582: How much notice did Duolingo give you before they off boarded you?

    [–]Velociraptor2018None 6 points7 points  (2 children)

    Probably none. A company I interned for (it’s no longer in existence) fired 6,000 contractors with no notice.

    [–]themaelstorm 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    They are contractors so likely the clause is "either side can just leave at any time"

    [–]KittenLaserFists 684 points685 points  (14 children)

    Their whole sales pitch was having native speakers cultivate content. It definitely undercuts that message.

    [–]agnus_luciferi 22 points23 points  (1 child)

    That's their sales pitch? I've never heard that.

    [–]vytahnat:pl speak:en,nl,ru speakabіt:de,es,eo,hu,ja,cs 26 points27 points  (0 children)

    That was their sales pitch until 2015.

    https://duolingo.fandom.com/wiki/Duolingo_Wiki:Archive/Immersion

    [–]reichplatz 7 points8 points  (2 children)

    Never heard of that.

    [–]ReverendAntonius -1 points0 points  (1 child)

    Never heard of a guy putting Reich in his name with a German flag on a Duolingo sub either, but here we are.

    You’d think people would be less dense, these days…

    [–]z0d14cde|es 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    That may well be what they were doing but I never really consciously thought about it, which tells me it probably wasn't their sales pitch

    [–]ughnotanothernamelearning Welsh/dysgu Cymraeg 133 points134 points  (0 children)

    I am sad and troubled by this development. I deeply sympathize with all the translators (whose hard work has never seemed to be properly appreciated by Duolingo).

    [–]moonlitjasperN: 🇺🇸 L: 🇯🇵🇪🇸 194 points195 points  (0 children)

    this makes me sad tbh

    [–]PckMan 220 points221 points  (19 children)

    I don't like it. AI is not as good as people think it is and without people who know the language to be there to spot mistakes it just cascades.

    Laying off people in favor of AI is a scummy tactic and it makes the user experience worse but most people think AI is amazing and great at everything. Anyone who speaks at least two languages very well knows translators and AI translators make a lot of mistakes still.

    [–]bnunamak 13 points14 points  (0 children)

    The people that know the language are still there (just less of them). Same fate that awaits most knowledge worker jobs in the near future.

    [–]_Murd3r_ 35 points36 points  (4 children)

    100%. Ai is good and all, and i've ran into several mistakes from it. I'm no where near fluent in the language i'm learning, and yet I can still correct AI in some situations.

    [–]jnhwdwd343 2 points3 points  (3 children)

    What AI did you use?

    [–]_Murd3r_ 2 points3 points  (2 children)

    ChatGPT. The same one Duolingo uses.

    [–]futboldorado 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    3.5 or 4. Basically, the free version or the paid version?

    [–]afraidtobecrate 4 points5 points  (2 children)

    without people who know the language to be there to spot mistakes it just cascades.

    OP said there are people there to spot mistakes.

    [–]Moratorii 4 points5 points  (1 child)

    For now, for one language.

    I've been using Duolingo recently, came back after years of not using it. My native speaker friend was constantly complaining about how stilted and wrong the options were. The voice was robotic and clipped, AI generated, and some of the answers it gave were clumsy or even plain wrong.

    For the smaller languages, there's likely no one reviewing it anymore, and if you don't already know a native speaker you have no idea if you're learning wrong or not. You can definitely tell which ones have had real human hands on them and which ones are being churned through AI to save a buck.

    This sucks. Nothing like having a worse curriculum because of a greedy corp getting dollar signs in their eyes when they think that AI can 1:1 replace humans on the complexity of language.

    [–]cyberpunk_now 13 points14 points  (6 children)

    it's sadly not a simple matter of quality vs. quality; there are also time and cost considerations. The price difference between top 5% linguist, to contractor/volunteer, to AI is quite huge each step. People may think it's "scummy," but it was arguably scummy to rely so heavily on contractors and volunteers, and I'd actually argue Duolingo has been questionable quality for quite some time even with their fully human staff -- it's why I never bothered renewing.

    Even if an AI tool "only" has an 80% rate of needing no corrections, versus a contractor/volunteer with a 95% hit rate, well... the AI can translate a full team's monthly workload in probably less than an hour, not to mention for only a few dollars of server time (or whatever rates they're paying). Then there only needs to be actual 1-2 qualified people to correct it. It's really a no-brainer, especially in societies that highly prioritize personal gain and profit above all else. I don't necessarily support this, but that's just kinda the way it is now.

    Programmers are now extensively using AI-based tools that automatically fill in significant chunks of code. It's not always perfect, but it's a huge time saver. I don't talk with programmers much, but I don't think many of them would ever blame the tools if they make crappy code. In the end, it's their responsibility to make sure it's clean and it works.

    It's the same for AI translation -- it's a tool, not some straight-to-production shortcut (at least not yet). If Duolingo is churning out crap, it's not the tool's fault; it's some human-level decision making process that allows the crap to filter through, whether it be via negligence, or cost-saving mismanagement.

    I used to be a translator and I know multiple languages, and I still fully welcome these sorts of tools; they would've saved me and my team so much stupid redundant effort and grief. The fact that I can ask modern LLM AI to not only translate, but also to double check, correct itself, and even adjust the style and fidelity of translation within seconds is uncanny... and that's now, while AI is in its awkward puberty stage.

    It's just a guess, but I would expect Duolingo's overall quality to either stay the same, or maybe even get better. With less contractor rotation, and less overall direct translation burden on them, it might make it easier for the remaining personnel to focus more on quality and proofreading rather than trying to constantly meet translation deadlines... especially when they can literally just ask Bard or ChatGPT to just walk through its translation process.

    [–]FlyingBishop 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    Duolingo has been questionable quality for quite some time even with their fully human staff

    I don't believe anyone has been using "fully human" translators for over a decade. Everyone uses some level of machine translation and I'm sure that Duolingo is overusing it but also from experience with ChatGPT we're hitting the point where it doesn't matter.

    [–]Darius510 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    Hour and dollars? More like seconds and cents. With cost going down and quality improving constantly.

    This was foreseeable and inevitable.

    [–]WalkFreeeee 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Programmers are now extensively using AI-based tools that automatically fill in significant chunks of code. It's not always perfect, but it's a huge time saver. I don't talk with programmers much, but I don't think many of them would ever blame the tools if they make crappy code. In the end, it's their responsibility to make sure it's clean and it works.

    To chime in, I am a programmer and this is spot on. Github copilot is straight up absurd. Just the time it saves from not needing to type full lines of code compounds up real quick, and that's without taking into account the times it spews up complete functions out of a comment line.

    A lot of people (generally more senior devs) try to downplay AI coding tools because they get some stuff wrong or that it isn't as good if you're doing more novel or complex work, and that is a real issue depending on what you do, but the vast, vast majority of coding tasks across all devs levels is not "novel and complex"

    For every guy thoroughly managing each byte of memory for their low level firmware tool and can't afford to check if the AI is correctly taking care of that with the same quality they do, there are hundreds making the same cookie cutter forms and database insertions that AI need minimal correction for. I know that, I am one of the latter, there have been very few situations where I asked AI for something and it gave me completely unusable code or code that would require more work to fix than if I had written it myself from the start. On the flip side, AI has generated code for me that official documentation was wrong about.

    [–]xondragrafia 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    If you truly are a translator, your ignorant comments for nothing but harm to the profession. A machine can never replace a human being, and many other professions don't lose value just because they use machines. Do better and delete this.

    [–]beldr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    They said the exact same thing when automation was introduced at factories

    [–]HostInternational293 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    if both humans and AI make mistakes, then why stick to humans? AI is cheaper and we live in capitalistict society. We are in great need of saving a few bucks here and there.

    [–]PckMan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Who is this "we" you're talking about because you're talking about the services you're using getting worse and people losing their jobs in the process, not to mention that for all you know your job could be on the chopping block too. So is "we" really the rich getting richer at the expense of the rest?

    [–]pmcall221:ie: 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Irish is a minority language and the AI voice makes some basic pronunciation errors. And what's worse is that they know because on some of them you can't report "this doesn't sound right" anymore. And you just know that it will never be fixed. They could have just kept the human voices, but no. The course didn't even change, they just made things worse.

    [–]Battle_Tortoise ==> 154 points155 points  (44 children)

    I wondered what changed. Some of the Spanish is now pronounced the wrong way. Seems like it started early to mid December. Everything will be mostly right, but two syllables will be pronounced wrong every 3 to 5 lessons now.

    [–]JackMontegue 16 points17 points  (1 child)

    Also, the AI speaker will sometimes speak so quickly that it mushes almost everything together, making the sentence incomprehensible unless slowed down to the (painfully) slow version. It gets so bad that words like "el" and "la" sometimes get completely dropped, meaning the user makes mistakes by leaving them out, because they can't hear them.

    [–]ZigweeNative Learning 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    This.

    [–]SarahFabulous 48 points49 points  (1 child)

    Same with Irish too.

    [–]AquilardenNative: Learning: 18 points19 points  (0 children)

    I keep reporting it, but I know it's useless. So much missed lentition and eclipsis, so many missed letters and clipped-off words.

    [–]galeeb 12 points13 points  (6 children)

    I can't stand "período" pronounced "periódo". And same experience for me, there's a number of other words suddenly pronounced incorrectly starting a little while back.

    edit: While I'm complaining, recently I seem to get questions wrong that have two possible answers. There never used to be two possible answers. Example, today I translated "Hablaba con mis amigas hasta tarde" as "I talked with my friends until late" and got it wrong. It wanted "I talked to my friends until late". Both "to" and "with" were options in the word bank.

    I suspect the calculus is that recent changes/AI may cause small problems for users, but not large enough ones for someone like me to stop subscribing, which is accurate. So they've likely determined they can lower the quality, cut costs, but expect revenue to stay the same, which in the end, is what a publicly traded company has to prioritize by law. I'm not a fan of this development.

    [–]DarkeyeSide 6 points7 points  (2 children)

    "Periodo" written without a visible accent can be pronounced "periódo", but if it's written "período" it should be pronounced as such

    [–]galeeb 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Thanks, that may semi-explain it. Duo always writes it with the accent, but never pronounces it that way. Are they interchangeable in real life outside of Duo?

    [–]DarkeyeSide 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Yeah, they have the same meaning. I'm not sure why there's 2 words that similar, but you can often find both in dictionaries

    [–]Battle_Tortoise ==> 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    I've noticed the same thing with your edit. When I first had the verb "andar" introduced, I was able to use it or "caminar" interchangeably. Now, when Duo wants "andar" then only "andar" will do.

    When I first heard it, I thought maybe it was an actual native speaker with a different accent. I've had a few in person Spanish classes and learned how some areas pronounce things differently, but the errors I'm hearing don't line up with the localized pronunciations I've heard of.

    [–]FartherAwayx3 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    I had one of those in Japanese recently that pissed me off. I don't remember the specifics, but it was a word order issue. A "later, I will..." vs "I will... later" story of thing. The way I put it was technically flipped from the Japanese sentence, but it didn't change the meaning at all and sounded way more natural to me.

    [–]LooksAtCloudses:3| 36 points37 points  (4 children)

    Same with French.

    [–]Spiritual_wanderingNone 21 points22 points  (3 children)

    I've noticed a decline in quality since they forced the new layout on everyone last year. I have a native tutor whose classes I've taken occasionally, and she can tell when a new student comes to her who has been learning with Duo.

    Someone else mentioned in the thread that Spanish has been changing a lot, and while I've not seen too many major changes in the French lessons -- although it has occurred -- some of the exercises have some strange and outright incorrect sentences. I've shown them to my tutor, and she's never seen some of them in either standard "school" French or spoken French.

    I've been using the app since April 2016 (over 2800 days), and it seems like the educational quality -- what there was -- has almost entirely been replaced by gamification. While there have been improvements, e.g., the voices have become better in many cases, overall the app feels like it should be listed in Google Play/Apple Store as a strictly a game rather than an educational tool.

    [–]conesy23 9 points10 points  (0 children)

    I've told my (Brazilian) Portuguese tutor about some of the stuff Duolingo has me do, and her response is while it's not necessarily wrong, it comes off as a bit more academical/formal. Like you, I've been around for a long time (since January 2015) so these changes are becoming even more apparent.

    [–]FightLikeABlue 6 points7 points  (1 child)

    I HATED the sudden layout change because I was doing Catalan, and I was this close to finishing the module and then bang, they changed it and I lost so much progress.

    [–]AltastrofaeNative: Learning: 🇯🇵 21 points22 points  (9 children)

    This is especially something I’ve noticed in Japanese which gets confusing when one syllable in the listening questions sounds like something else, and has caused me to answer incorrect on several occasions due to the sound not matching.

    [–]Captain_Chickpeas 7 points8 points  (7 children)

    Are you talking about the kunyomi vs onyomi issues in kanji readings? Here the fault is of the text to speech engine used.

    There are good TTS engines tailored to Japanese which are really good, but Duo prefers cartoon voices instead.

    [–]AltastrofaeNative: Learning: 🇯🇵 1 point2 points  (6 children)

    No just words in general being pronounced strangely

    [–]Captain_Chickpeas 1 point2 points  (5 children)

    Still a TTS issue. Not sure if the one Duo uses even has proper coverage for Asian languages. It works, but considering how completely off the pitch and sentence intonation is, I would say it's not intentional.

    [–]AltastrofaeNative: Learning: 🇯🇵 1 point2 points  (4 children)

    I'm not even sure inflection is good in Duolingo in any language, it's just not a resource I would use for that. Duolingo's always been fairly robotic sounding.

    [–]DrFabzTheTravelerN: S: 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    I saw several errors in the Portuguese course, specially on the AI speech. A lot of times reporting didn't fix it. It's a sinking ship now then.

    [–]dcporlandoNative 🇺🇸 Learning 🇪🇸 27 points28 points  (7 children)

    Highly unlikely to be attributable to AI unless your course was changed significantly in the last few months. Which I doubt.

    [–]MorukDilemma 34 points35 points  (6 children)

    There were a lot of changes recently.

    [–]GeorgeTheFunnyOneModerator[M] 2 points3 points  (4 children)

    Could you give some examples?

    [–]Battle_Tortoise ==> 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I can keep an ear out! I try to report them in the app when I hear them.

    [–]Battle_Tortoise ==> 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Excuse my terrible phonetics. They were never my strong point.

    Trying to skip ahead to unit 10 in section 5 in Spanish, "ducharme" is pronounced sort of like the English words "due charm" instead of "due char may." It's like it's pronouncing it in French instead of Spanish.

    [–]WintersLex 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    japanese, and indeed any non-latin script language was already a mess with audio and incorrect readings.

    i dread to imagine how bad it'll get now

    [–]makiller_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I've noticed this with Danish recently and been curious. Not that it gets the Danish wrong but actually the English translation of it. As an English native speaker there are times when I am trying to translate a sentence from Danish that I know but the version of the sentence in English they create makes no sense.

    It would certainly explain it if it were AI because it is always technically correct as a translation, but often is written so weirdly that it is never how a real person would say the phrase or the word order naturally in English.

    [–]Necessary-Anywhere92 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I noticed the French pronunciation was off yesterday and then came across this thread today. Really unfortunate.

    [–]spicy_pierogiNative English, learning Spanish 93 points94 points  (0 children)

    Beat them at their game and join an AI company that needs said native speakers for translations (half joking).

    This sucks though.

    [–]parthk 377 points378 points  (43 children)

    That' slimey of them man, it's hard enough to get a job as it is, sorry.

    I know there's a group that's building a duolingo alternative/fork from before duo started going downhill (its still got the tree and forums), but I don't know if i'm allowed to link them here, you could try asking them or maybe use your skills to volunteer?

    [–]raendropes | it | la 9 points10 points  (0 children)

    Even if you can't link it, you can still say what it's called. You've got me curious.

    [–]SpikedAssassin 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    Could you message me the link ?

    [–]Dapht42 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    I am curious to know what this group is, too!

    [–]pandasknit 7 points8 points  (0 children)

    I am so curious what this platform is! I miss forums and would love to learn more about where this magical place might be! Any chance I could DM for more info?

    [–]AffectionateEscape13 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    Would you please send me the link as well? I'm not very impressed with duolingo at all

    [–]Teh_RainbowGuyNative🇳🇱, Fluent🇺🇲🇬🇧, Confident🇩🇪, Learning🇷🇺 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Ooh, what's the platform called?

    [–]No-Name2222 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Can you let me know too?

    [–]eo5g 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Also interested

    [–]Nammi-namm 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I want to know too!

    [–]basalt2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    i'm also curious, if you could send me the link i'd be grateful :)

    [–]thunbot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I’ll join the list, haha

    [–]Loud-Share7775 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I'd like to know, too. Please.

    [–]1Helofabutler23 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    You're probably sick of hearing this but

    Can you please send me the link? Would love to check it out

    [–]blahbah 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I'd be interested too if you don't mind

    [–]_aimynona_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I'm also interested!

    [–]purnya232 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Sorry for adding myself here haha, but i'm interested as well!

    [–]broem86 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I'd also like a link to this.

    [–]BuniBunBun_Native: 🇬🇧 Learning: 🇪🇸🇰🇷🇫🇮 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Theres quite a queue, but im interested as well :)

    [–]mara_iara 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I'd also love to know! I'm so glad I discovered a place that collects and tries to build on the forums that were deprecated.

    [–]thebluebearb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    do you have the name or link you could send me?

    [–]DzabeL 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    group

    Which group is this? Can I have the link in the dm?

    [–]niklight44 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Can I have the link in the dm?

    [–]Nervardia 4 points5 points  (1 child)

    I'd jump over immediately if they allow me to port my streak.

    I hit 3700 the day before yesterday.

    [–]rad-1 12 points13 points  (0 children)

    Streak addiction is dangerous. Learning languages is safer. Cuidate!

    [–]BobMortimersButthole 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I'd like to know too. Could you please send me the link?

    [–]Fernald_mc 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Im interested as well! The forums were so helpful when encountering an unexplained concept I dont know why they got rid of them

    [–]sino-diogenes 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    While using AI is highly incentivized for duolinguo, any open source alternative will necessitate the use of LLMs because they won't be able to pay contractors to do it.

    [–]yellowtulips7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I would love to have the link as well!

    [–]pleasent_icelearning & 170 points171 points  (36 children)

    Soo.. we're paying for AI now and not real people doing the work?

    [–]fluidbeforephenyl 135 points136 points  (12 children)

    Same thought...our premium fee should be lower but we all know it won't be.

    [–]pleasent_icelearning & 40 points41 points  (0 children)

    It really should. But as you said, that's not happening

    [–]pianoceo -1 points0 points  (8 children)

    Why should it be lower?

    You’re paying for a high-quality experience. Assuming that experience remains the same and there’s no competing product, your price should stay the same.

    [–]fluidbeforephenyl 7 points8 points  (7 children)

    I'm paying for people to do the work. I'm not paying for AI to do it. By keeping the prices high (or even raising them) as we let AI take over the work, all we are doing is lining the pockets of CEOs - all while people are losing their jobs. Products have no place being top dollar if AI is doing all the work. All this will do over time is create precedents for companies to not hire anyone, and eventually, the economic disparity between worker and CEO will be even greater than it already is (as no jobs will be available), and chances of personal prosperity will go from slim (present day) to none.

    [–]pianoceo -1 points0 points  (6 children)

    If they worked all day and didn’t produce a product would you still give them money?

    A good example would be a car. If you drive a car that you spent money on then you’re spending your money on products that are almost entirely made by semi-intelligent machines.

    If you found out all along that AI produced the car or any other product you spent your time and money on, would you ask for your money back?

    [–]fluidbeforephenyl 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    That's a fair point, and no, I wouldn't ask for my money back. However I feel as it encroaches into our day to day lives more and more, we will start to see the disparities I speak of. Though maybe I am just being paranoid.

    [–]pianoceo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I don't think you're being paranoid. AI is already starting to encroach on aspects of our lives. My position is that there are ways to solve this problem within economic models that are already proven instead of societal revolution. From my comment below:

    I don't suggest taxing as the solution. Something a little more novel:

    Tokenize the entity that has ownership over the goods or services the AI produces and distribute the surplus value back to its customers.

    Capital from production flows back through to customers who consume the product that has been disrupted by AI and customers in turn *choose* how they want to distribute the cash. This drives innovation in key areas consumers have demand. More democratized, less bureaucratic.

    [–]FlyingBishop 3 points4 points  (3 children)

    If shit is being produced purely by AI, the capital should be taxed and redistributed. One guy with an AI factory shouldn't be making hundreds of millions in revenue.

    [–]pianoceo -1 points0 points  (2 children)

    Now this is a concept I can get behind. However, I wouldn't assume taxing it is the best way to distribute the money generated by AI or else it would end up in the pockets of the highest bidder (i.e., donors that lobby for the credit).

    Might I suggest an alternative option:

    Tokenize the entity that has ownership over the goods or services the AI produces and distribute the surplus value back to its customers. Capital from production flows back through to customers who consume the product that has been disrupted by AI and customers in turn *choose* how they want to distribute the cash. More democratized, less bureaucratic.

    [–]FlyingBishop 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    "Tokenize"? Cryptocurrency isn't democracy it's plutocracy.

    Bureaucracy is a necessary component of democracy. You don't want a popular vote deciding what standard voltages should be, you want a bureaucractic commission of skilled electricians. Same is true of most things that involve skill.

    [–]Bradyscardia 12 points13 points  (4 children)

    It’s weird to think about. I think price should be based on the value it brings more than how much it costs.

    [–]FlyingBishop 4 points5 points  (1 child)

    In a free market there should be competition so price is based on a margin over production costs, and value places a ceiling on the price, not a floor. It only expands to be the value if there's no competition.

    [–]unsafeideas 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    That is idealized free market with commodity product and many competitors producing the same product.

    Nothing in language learning is like that. Pens and socks are like that.

    [–]StellarSteals 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    So same price?

    [–]dcporlandoNative 🇺🇸 Learning 🇪🇸 11 points12 points  (0 children)

    If you were the norm, you weren’t paying at all while they are still in a very deep hole of 12 years of investing heavily while losing money every single quarter. Two quarters of a small profit doesn’t begin to make them back what they have invested.

    [–]VtMueller 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    What´s the problem with that?

    [–]afraidtobecrate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    You are paying for the product.

    [–]Instigated- 6 points7 points  (13 children)

    • they have had staff layoffs, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still people working there. The company has many people working there in different roles, it doesn’t run itself.

    • Pretty much every company has had layoffs at some point in the past 4 years: for other industries this hit hardest during covid crisis, for the tech industry the crunch is now with the economic situation.

    • this is the first year the company has actually pulled a profit… how do you think it managed to exist for the past 10+ years when it was spending more than it was earning? People invested in it who aren’t going to keep putting money in if there never get paid back.

    • one of the reasons the top courses are so good is because they already use AI to personalise the lessons to where the learner is at. You and I could do the same course however there would be differences because we’d struggle with different concepts or words and the AI will respond to that to give us more practice and support where we need it.

    • people are always saying they want the less popular courses to be brought up to the same quality standard as the most popular courses, and want more languages, and AI will help them achieve that faster and more affordably.

    [–]oils-and-opioids 19 points20 points  (12 children)

    Less popular languages and courses are arguably the ones that need experienced human speakers the most. Less popular languages are less likely to have comprehensive and highly trained models, making them more likely to have issues.

    However I have a total distrust of AI all together. I don't want to learn a language from a technology that tells people eggs melt, gets basic facts wrong, hallucinates frequently and is confident in it's inaccuracies. How can I trust the grammatical rules or structures it's teaching me when it gets the basics so hilariously wrong

    [–]socceroo14 6 points7 points  (7 children)

    The word hallucinate needs to be scrubbed. It's propaganda to make people think AI can work perfectly. But current language models are always going to be prediction machines, so spewing out garbage is part of the model. There's a study about how they answer political/news questions wrong about 30% of the time and cannot be improved.

    [–]oils-and-opioids 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    Which is why it's so incredibly dangerous for companies to fire human experts and rely almost completely on these garbage algorithms

    [–]MajesticIngenuity32 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    GPT-4 is very capable with the right prompts.

    [–]oils-and-opioids 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Not in languages with smaller communities of speakerslike Welsh and Irish and Ukrainian

    [–]Anxious_Blacksmith88 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    This means nothing. You are literally rolling a seed number every time you prompt it. For you said prompt might work and for another user it won't.

    [–]Instigated- -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    Firstly, it’s not being left to AI: AI is a tool being used by skilled humans who review all that the ai does and maintains standards. Translators are still employed, they just don’t have to do all the work themselves.

    Secondly it’s a furphy to suggest human work is always superior, it’s more accurate that humans at their best out perform AI however humans are not always at their best - they are inexperienced at the beginning of their career, they can be tired, sick, or not always good at their job. When humans and ai work together we raise the floor.

    Thirdly, if you want to do everything the most slow & expensive way, gotta ask why you want to use an app at all as the purists would argue the best is 1:1 human tuition (which isn’t scalable or affordable). If duolingo has limited resources, if ai can take some of the load, this allows them to achieve more.

    [–]YourFaceIsThePlace 51 points52 points  (5 children)

    It matters to me -- I like the human touch in language learning. I might be misremembering, but I completed the old Japanese course ages ago, and the sentences sounded much more natural; I'm going through the whole updated Japanese course now, and even in the third unit, the English sentences are much more stilted/awkward, and some of the Japanese seems to be the same (from what I can tell). It's difficult because I like Duolingo and have a 2000+-day streak, but I wonder if the Dutch I'm learning (new language for me) is as funky as the Japanese.

    [–]Captain_Chickpeas 13 points14 points  (2 children)

    The Japanese sentences are mostly okay, other then sometimes weird phrasing and abuse of は where が fits better. The English sentences are often a mess

    [–]YourFaceIsThePlace 7 points8 points  (1 child)

    Yeah, the English in particular is REALLY bad and unnatural. There have been several occasions where I know what the Japanese means, and I know how I'd say it in English personally, but I'm staring at the English word choices figuring out what Duo wants me to pick ...

    [–]Captain_Chickpeas 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Oh man, I had one such super long sentence in a Jump Here test. Thr English grammatically made sense, but not what the Japanese sentence said.

    I'm glad we have the word bank. I originally stopped doing the course, because of typing exercises.

    [–]VtMueller 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Chances are if you didn´t read this post you would never realize there isn´t a "human touch" anymore.

    [–]CrowdedHighways 35 points36 points  (2 children)

    The grading section of the stories (powered by AI) consistently marks it wrong when I use feminine adjectives to refer to myself! And has made corrections that even I (at ~B1 level) recognize as incorrect (of course, given my level, it's possible that I'm wrong about them being wrong heh...but it "corrects" feminine adjectives to masculine almost every single time). This saddens me. :(

    [–]InflationMadeMeDoIt 5 points6 points  (1 child)

    Not sure what you arentalking about cause russian language has nonstories but i often made the same mistake in other parts of the courses. I had to use the gender of the person speaking not from my perspective. Which i often overlooked

    [–]socceroo14 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I'd type a non-typical Spanish word and it keeps insisting I'm using English. There are lots of basic words I can't use. If you're not high level you may not notice it.

    [–][deleted] 32 points33 points  (0 children)

    I hate this thank you for publishing it.

    [–]Hoodedness 14 points15 points  (1 child)

    I guess it's a way to cut costs to improve their profits. Maybe in time you can jump to a competitor that specialises in the language you worked on; you definitely have the experience and valuable insight. Best of luck. 👍

    [–]Character-Cat-6565 C1 B2 83 points84 points  (13 children)

    These days it’s just the brand and they want to squeeze the hell out of it, without adding much quality.

    Hope it backfires soon.

    [–]Needanightowl 28 points29 points  (12 children)

    Oh it’s back firing. I am already considering other options among their competitors. Them doing this is a strong signal that I can’t count of them adding more languages.

    [–]ReaverRiddle 12 points13 points  (2 children)

    People have been saying they're "considering" changing to an alternative for at least a year since all the new changes but subscriptions keep going up.

    [–]icanpotatoes 31 points32 points  (3 children)

    Same. I was already on the fence when the forums were trashed and they started implementing AI as a paid tier to explain answers instead.

    I use Babbel as well and from what I can tell, they use humans for their courses and the voices are actually human too. I believe that Pimsleur is the same, too.

    A big part of Duo for me is that they had a community in the forums, whilst the others do not. Well now that the community aspect of Duo is gone and they’re firing humans in favour of AI, it just leaves a bitter taste.

    [–]agnus_luciferi 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    Pimsleur is far and away the best language learning program, outside of hiring an actual tutor.

    [–]galeeb 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    Agreed on the AI explanations. Absolutely hate them, and the fake sanitized "conversations". Important for folks to support human tutors, whether online or in person.

    [–]DenialNyle 7 points8 points  (0 children)

    Its not really backfiring though, because subscriptions and new users are increasing. They have also publicly stated multiple times that they are not focusing on adding more courses.

    [–]BisonEvery 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I'm going to point out that a lot of other language learning companies have already done similar cuts to utilize more AI.

    [–]WalkFreeeee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Competitors are either already doing it or will start to do so as soon as they're able to.

    One very important aspect of possible effects on the job market caused by AI is that as soon as it starts being used in a niche, every other company becomes more and more pressured to do the same to be able compete which then pressures everyone else still not using and so on. It starts slow but then reaches a point where it ramps up quickly.

    If this works out for Duolingo I can bet that within less than a year basically every other similar language learning tool will do the exact same.

    [–]CyrusmarikitN: 🇵🇭 | K:🇬🇧🇲🇾 | L: 🇻🇳🇰🇪 63 points64 points  (0 children)

    So more and more incorrect translations would come in our laptops and even our pockets.

    [–]Badartist888 12 points13 points  (0 children)

    My general opinion of Duolingo after coming back from a few years break is that the whole thing is about making money these days. Like I get that it is a company and companies want money, but just every aspect of it. From the hearts/ energy, to constant adds for them and crappy mobile adds, to trying to get you to market to your friends etc etc. The end user experience is far worse than it was years ago.

    Still, for running drills, I haven't really found a better alternative. As I don't trust AI content, perhaps I'll have to look more seriously elsewhere.

    [–]totallynotabotXP 66 points67 points  (18 children)

    Well it certainly hasn't gotten worse. I myself am a translator and I am aware that this will soon be obsolete. In all honesty though, if there was a flock of professional translators and/or native speakers curating the sentences, they should be embarassed with the results.

    [–]Affectionate-Car3906 15 points16 points  (0 children)

    I think there's still room for translators in long creative texts as long as there is a demand for them. AI still can't inject the creative choices and personality into stories and characters like a professional translator can.

    [–]TheRealCabbageJack 25 points26 points  (12 children)

    This is a fair point. The sentences are frequently trash. "The women are not chairs." Well no shit. All that does is make me second guess my learning because I'm like "did I get 'women' wrong or did I get 'chairs' wrong? This makes no sense."

    [–]TowJamnEarl 41 points42 points  (8 children)

    These odd sentences I actually don't mind as I see it as a way to catch you out but from someone that's learning Danish I can confidently say the English is often quite wrong and unnecessarily confusing.

    [–]totallynotabotXP 17 points18 points  (7 children)

    yeah, that's more of what I'm talking about too. It's a somewhat frequent topic on here as well: most courses have at some points a questionable grasp of the language that you are learning from. The Spanish from German course has quite a number of sentences where in order to get your translation of a Spanish sentence into German marked as correct, you have to formulate it in ways that no native speaker ever would.

    I really don't mind the nonsense sentences at all, because I think they actually help in acquisition.

    [–]TowJamnEarl 6 points7 points  (6 children)

    Until I read this post I always assumed it was A.I anyway due to these infractions.

    I don't want to s.hit on them too hard though as the app is helping but theres certainly room for improvement.

    [–]totallynotabotXP 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    I work in translation and increasingly with AI (it's gonna take our jobs for real lol) I think the nonsense sentences might be AI, but the type of mismatched translation described above is something that I don't really see when using deepl (and based on my limited understanding of how translation AIs work, I think it's unlikely that they would).

    [–]esushi 15 points16 points  (0 children)

    It's interesting that you're really describing the huge benefit to those types of sentences in this comment but saying it's a negative? If the sentences were predictable (or common phrases) you'd be able to "translate" them without even knowing every word in the sentence. Instead you had to stop and really consider the translation, learning more in the process...

    [–]unsafeideas -1 points0 points  (1 child)

    None of that have anything to do with translators.

    Also, the obsession with the occasional weird sentence is weird to me. They never bothered me and at least make the course less boring. You have to actually read the sentence and understand it instead of going by assumptions.

    [–]leweman20 27 points28 points  (3 children)

    So your telling me the worlds largest language platform is getting rid of translators and is no longer employing new ones - this is one of major reasons for learning Japanese is to become a translator, what a huge demotivator to carry on. Also sorry about your job.

    [–]ericarlen 25 points26 points  (0 children)

    It matters. Those AI translators are okay for asking directions and stuff but they're not as good at teaching languages as a native speaker or someone who has studied the language.

    [–]GrapesOfPoliwrath 24 points25 points  (3 children)

    As a user, this definitely matters to me. Thank you for posting and making the community aware of how things are being handled. I've already paid for the year, but it sounds like I'll be cancelling when the time comes.

    [–]slightly2spooked 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Pretty sure you can get a refund under these circumstances, as what you paid for is no longer available. I got one five months into an annual plan when they got rid of the tree.

    [–]Woostershirenb25 cy:10 40 points41 points  (11 children)

    Cancelled Super Duolingo. Hate this.

    [–]dcporlandoNative 🇺🇸 Learning 🇪🇸 11 points12 points  (6 children)

    If you cancel Super DuoLingo, you should really stop using the product and delete your account. That will show them you are unhappy.

    [–]ioa99 15 points16 points  (5 children)

    I think they will care more about the lost subscription (money) rather than a lost account which doesn't offer cash.

    [–]dcporlandoNative 🇺🇸 Learning 🇪🇸 7 points8 points  (4 children)

    Realistically, 5% or so actually subscribe. Their big selling point is the number of people with accounts.

    Also realistically, most people saying they are going to cancel weren’t really paying anyway. They say they are going to cancel over layoffs, but why? I have been hit by two layoffs. I would never ask anyone to boycott the organizations.

    Not accusing you of lying, but if you really canceled, I think you should go all the way and delete your account cutting the number of users too.

    [–]ioa99 1 point2 points  (3 children)

    I never said I'm going to cancel my subscription. I was never a plus user and I never intended to boycott Duolingo.

    [–]dcporlandoNative 🇺🇸 Learning 🇪🇸 2 points3 points  (2 children)

    Sorry, I was referring back to the person who said they had canceled the super DuoLingo. When you replied, I thought you were that person. Sorry.

    [–]AcanthisittaRadiant7 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    I simply block Duolingo's ads through a DNS server; and don't subscribe. The only ads they can give me are ads for Super Duolingo, because those ads are baked into the software. Otherwise, not a single cent of ad revenue goes to them from my using their service; I simply don't even receive the ad content, and they are aware that content failed to send. People should block their ads, and utilize their service. This is the best possible outcome. It causes them to have to support your account and associated data (and US law requires them maintain that data for 6 months if I remember rightly.) While receiving absolutely nothing back from you. Normally hosting ads gets them revenue on a per-view basis; which is why the ads are mandatory and obstructive unless they're the skippable super ads; because ads for Super take up valuable ad space that could potentially get the company money when a user decides not to purchase super Duolingo. Otherwise, the other ads you see are downloaded from the cloud, usually from an ad server. Just blocking these ad servers will stop ads where Duolingo benefits from showing up.

    [–]dcporlandoNative 🇺🇸 Learning 🇪🇸 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    I hope experience all the karma you deserve.

    [–]Instigated- 10 points11 points  (2 children)

    If you cancel super but keep using the free version, the message you send is “I like your product but can’t/won’t pay for it”… which is exactly why they need to economise and make layoffs…

    [–]slightly2spooked 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Sounds more like they need to improve their product…

    [–]Instigated- -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    If the product isn’t any good, people won’t use it. That means the product has a problem.

    If people use the free version but not they paid version, it means the free version is good enough that people don’t feel any need to pay for the paid version.

    Which message does the OP want to send?

    [–]malletgirl91 8 points9 points  (0 children)

    Holy shit, I was working on an application to a contract music education position there when the listing closed before I could submit, maybe it was for the better that I didn’t

    [–]nmc1995 7 points8 points  (1 child)

    We are starting to see companies be measured on their compassion, here in the UK we have ESG loans. Eventually, retaining staff who could be replaced by AI will be seen as a selling point, much like companies who work to improve important factors like sustainability, equality etc

    [–]LittleMetalCannon 8 points9 points  (0 children)

    Well... if they're just going to use AI, there goes my idea of buying premium. I'm not paying $100/year so you can middleman me ChatGPT.

    [–]my_clever-name 8 points9 points  (1 child)

    They need to bring the discussion forums back. It will mean hiring real people to police the forums. I got so much help from the forums. I miss them.

    [–]WatermelonCatHat 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    I'm struggling immensely with grammar since they got rid. I'm maintaing my streak, but I've hit a wall as I don't understand grammar rules and why.

    [–]Tee_H 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    Löl well then I expect more useless sentences that doesn‘t make ANY sense anymore :D

    [–]actionrat 7 points8 points  (0 children)

    Started off not paying anyone to generate content, then finally started paying people, and now paying fewer people to check/edit AI generated content.

    We better at least be getting a lot more content :/

    [–]SalusPopuliSupremaLe 11 points12 points  (2 children)

    This sucks for you and I'm sorry it happened. Is it still considered a layoff if you're a contractor?

    Honestly, because the sentence translations were already a bit funky, I don't know if it will matter much for the languages that are already well-established.

    [–]No_Comb_4582[S] 15 points16 points  (1 child)

    It was technically called “off boarding” not “layoff”. I guess I misspoke.

    [–]SalusPopuliSupremaLe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    It’s not a huge deal. I just think it has slightly different legal implications (NAL). Hopefully, you’ll find a job soon. Best of luck.

    [–]cacuquechua 11 points12 points  (2 children)

    In German/French, I've been seeing huge errors in the genders of nouns for some time now. This results in total nonsense. So maybe that’s why ?

    [–]ReaverRiddle 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Can you give an example?

    [–]kinoki1984 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    I see AI as a good companion for coming up with exercises. As in, a human can outline what words and phrases needs to be in every segment. Then have an AI make sentences and texts around those subjects. Then review. AI needs to be involved so that words the user needs to train on are incorporated regularly in courses. In some aspect.

    [–]slightly2spooked 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    This is the ‘AI’ they always used, which is simply an algorithm that adds vocabulary into grammar structures as required before being reviewed. The ‘AI’ they’re claiming to use now is a language learning model, which is when you feed the ‘AI’ a data bank of sentences and it spits out new ones that it thinks match the syntax. I’ve put ‘AI’ in scare quotes because neither of these things are actually artificial intelligence as we imagine it - in both cases it’s producing sentences based on a rubric, but one of those rubrics has been carefully crafted to reduce error and the other one has been hallucinated by the AI itself, leaving it open to all sorts of problems.

    [–]my_clever-name 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    As long as the pigs can still clean dishes on top of the refrigerator while they stand on a cow's back, I'm good.

    I love the nonsense sentences. Can AI do those?

    Really though, Duolingo needs someone to proof-listen to the lessons. I've been learning Spanish from English for a few years. The volume differences between the voices is horrible.

    I suppose Duolingo will find out if AI is a good move or not, they just need to watch what their customers do.

    [–]Coldtrojan 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    Matters enough for me to delete the app.

    I don't want to support a company that doesn't support it's employees or contractors.

    [–]skunkmandrake 19 points20 points  (1 child)

    Lame ass move. I expect a lot of other companies are/will be doing the same thing. How long until we have a serious conversation about regulating AI for businesses and professional usage?

    [–]DRose23805 17 points18 points  (1 child)

    AI will keep replacing people until there are too few people making a living to keep the economy alive, and the bigwigs at the top will wonder why.

    [–]anger_is_my_meat 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    Let's be clear: AI didn't develop itself, it doesn't deploy itself. AI isn't replacing anyone. Management is replacing people. Bigwigs are replacing people. When I get laid off, it's not because AI took my job. It's because management did so. Except in cases where the task is something humans can't reasonably do--e.g., protein folding--I hate AI as much as the next guy, but our ire must be directed at those men and women who seem intent to crucify mankind on the cross of wealth and avarice.

    [–]Whiskey-on-the-Rocks 15 points16 points  (0 children)

    I've already been seeing sentences that don't make sense in English on my French course. As in, "ring at the door" - which I've never heard anyone say in the UK, you "ring the door". You might "knock at the door" or "knock on the door" but you don't ring at it. I assumed it came from a native French speaker with English as a second language, but AI makes a lot more sense.

    I get Super through a family member, but I certainly wouldn't pay for it. They are really trying to force you to spend money on gems these days (I'm looking at you UI design that puts the 'buy' button for time boosts exactly where people will be frantically tapping trying to beat the clock.)

    I've had many happy years on Duolingo and I will stick with it until it becomes unusable for me, but it seems to be on the downward spiral these days because they're just trying to squeeze as much money out of it as possible now.

    I'm sorry for all the people who've lost their jobs in this lay off.

    [–]Natt42Learning 10 points11 points  (1 child)

    Thanks for posting this to give everyone heads up. It's sad and in all honesty I hope it'll backfire soon.

    They've changed voices in Irish course a few months ago and around 70% of pronunciation is confirmed to be wrong. So when I learn new things, I'm actually not learning much until I google for the right pronunciation. Not to mention these artifical voices are horrible and listening to them (or trying to understand wtf they're saying) is just hopeless.

    [–]PlingPlongDingDong 29 points30 points  (2 children)

    Fuck AI

    [–]Yejus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    That's the future.

    [–]Amethystmage 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    I'm honestly not surprised. AI was something they talked a lot about during Duocon. They don't seem to give a damn about screen reader accessibility either. I cancelled Super for that reason. This just gives me another reason. It makes me wonder when they'll start relying on AI for designing the animated characters too.

    [–]Crowgurrl 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    It is a mixed bag. I notice in my Spanish class with English first language that the English translations are often twisted a bit. My answer is correct but considered off by either order of words or that twist by someone who isn't an English speaker from birth

    In the long run I am learning another language and exercising my 70 year old brain. All is wonderful and plan on continuing my streak that will be today 1066 once I do my classes.

    Life is a never black and white. We must learn to travel in the grey (gris) on our journey and not sweat the small stuff.

    [–]Captain_Chickpeas 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Considering how behind Duo is on curating existing content, I am not sure firing people is the way to go 😅

    [–]MuffinMonkey 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Deleting the app. Maybe they can replace their paying customers with AI as well.

    [–]Legend0fJulle 8 points9 points  (0 children)

    That's a shitty thing to do from them Considered buying super after a few months of use but after this I don't think I will

    [–]Affectionate-Car3906 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    As much as it sucks people lost their jobs I can't say it's necessarily unexpected. If all they were really doing was translations, verification of translations is much much simpler and requires less people than generating them. The format of Duolingo lessons lends itself to using AI because it's not like the writing is hugely creative. You're not reading novels where translators have more creative discretion to inject some personality into the text from one sentence to the next. They are basically all simple standalone sentences that don't require any context. I am not super pro AI necessarily but I also don't think jobs should exist that people don't need to do anymore. That's some pre industrial revolution thinking.

    If you were a translator at this company I recommend trying to get more work on long form text. Hopefully something in fiction where you can actually exercise your creativity. If that kind of art in translation is lost that would be unfortunate in my opinion.

    [–]probablyTrashh 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    So they're lowering costs. That means my premium costs will drop, right? Right?

    [–]PrincessMysticRose 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    I really hate it. I am learning languages to read literature made by real humans not AI. Them removing forums was a really bad decision and now AI is being used to teach languages? I want to learn from native speakers, not robots that steal those experiences from native speakers. It really feels like Duolingo doesn't want us to learn from real human beings.

    [–]lizziewriter 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Yes, it matters, on several levels. For example, as a paying user I'm not pleased. AI is on the rise, sure. It's not what one expects from premium products though. Then obviously jerking around professionals isn't cool. I understand they've taken advantage of volunteer labor in the past as well. This pattern is not something I want to support financially or otherwise.

    [–]unwad77 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Disappointed to see this post removed by the mods.

    [–]ptung8 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    Idk I just hope they solve the audio on some of their sentences. Too many times the correct phrase is misstated/ambiguous.

    [–]Psykopatate 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    Not unexpected. The direction they're taking is god awful, just pushing gamification to an absurd point just to cram more subscriptions. Keep the teams strained instead of benefiting from AI and freeing time for people.

    So just your average cool app that became leeched by avid ghouls, reducing the user experience in the way.

    [–]pavoganso 5 points6 points  (2 children)

    Very scummy. I was going to buy super duolingo but I won't now.

    [–]VoiceofMidnightStorm 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    That absolutely sucks!

    [–]Original_Algae_8255learning A1:🇩🇪, A1:🇪🇸, A1:🇫🇷 2 points3 points  (2 children)

    Curious questions --

    Q-How did you got hired at duolingo at first ?

    Q- Was it easy or tough?

    [–]No_Comb_4582[S] 8 points9 points  (1 child)

    I got hired by looking at their freelance postings on their website. I had to apply and do a few activities to prove my skills. It was medium-hard. Definitely not easy, but challenging enough to be interesting. I saw a lot of changes over my five years.

    [–]Captain_Chickpeas 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    AI might belp with diversifying the sentence pool, but we're probably going to see tons of sentences were the languages don't align. I'm still going to keep on using the app, but I don't like the direction Duo is taking.

    [–]likeabrainfactory 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    If AI helps the courses expand and a human is still checking the translations, I don't see an issue. Maybe we can finally get stories outside of the most common languages.

    [–]HydeVDL 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I can't lie, google translate really helped me get better with my english but it's not perfect. in some languages it's.. not the best (like going from any asian language to english)

    that's not a quality change, they're just trying to cut corners

    [–]justatadnerdy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I mean, the first sentence I learned in Dutch (iirc) was ‘I am a banana’. So I thought it was AI already xD

    [–]Nde_japu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Not that I like it, but it's not like the humans didn't do some goofy shit either. For example why I am learning nonsense in early Finnish lessons like parakeet, wizard, man with sisu, etc? With my very limited brain capacity I'd prefer these weren't the first 100 words to learn in Finnish. Makes zero sense.

    [–]GoblinFrogKingNative 🇺🇲 | Learning 🇲🇽 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I guess that depends. Does it matter? What systems are they using with ai? What's the data set informing their ai?

    Also, what was the project the translators working on? Could very well be something where they have to move on from your expertise.

    [–]MrMemphis17 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    The big format change drove me away from Duolingo and I’ll never go back.

    [–]Stray_God_YatoLearning:🇲🇽🇨🇱 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    This is why i never take contracted jobs, sorry they did you this way

    [–]Globaldoodler 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Also, just to say, is anyone also somewhat outraged on how they can lay off such a huge percentage of their workforce but keep prices the same for their consumers? Obviously this is business and capitalism but I find it a little brushed under the rug with this while AI discussion.

    [–]SaltNorth 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I just found out. Cancelling my Super subscription right f*cking now.

    [–]Mavakor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I was literally about to buy super. The advertising was wearing me down but if it's just AI, no thank you. Is there a better site/app for learnign Japanese?

    [–]xondragrafia 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    People cheer this kind of thing and are happy that humans lose their jobs to machines. I hope they are ready to speak like incoherent robots, because we are humans, not machines. You can't learn a human language from a machine. Quality is just going to plummet. Whatever happens with this company depends on what humans choose to do: accept a low quality product or flock where real human language is taught by humans. It will be the latter, eventually, because a machine will never beat humans when it comes to language. Mark my words.

    [–]MajorMojoJojo 2 points3 points  (2 children)

    As someone who has worked in AI for literally decades, and seen how it has progressed and developed, I think this is a disaster.

    The problem with 'AI' is that it isn't actually 'intelligent' and most LLMs are trained on public data which means it is frequently grammatically incorrect and often breaches copyright. They also do not take account of colloquialisms or the ever evolving changes to the language; just take the current rise of 'rizz' as an example, how will it translate that to Spanish, Japanese or Arabic?

    Ironically I just cancelled the auto-renew on our Duolingo subscription for other reasons but I suspect that increasing Duolingo will come to resemble Monty Python's "Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook" sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grA5XmBRC6g

    [–]Gredran learning , 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    AI is still pretty unreliable that I wouldn’t trust it 100%…

    [–]VitaminDdoc 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    It does as there are subtle aspects of languages that I do not believe AI can understand yet.

    [–]thesimstwice 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    AI just kinda defeats the whole purpose. if i wanted to learn a language solely through technology, i’d use machine translators… without learning from actual native speakers

    [–]NoDoorsHere 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    well time to expect some unhinged crap for practice

    [–]DatingAdviceGiver101 13 points14 points  (5 children)

    As long as the learning material is correct, I don't mind whether it is human or AI generated.

    That's my opinion strictly from a Duolingo user POV.

    Obviously, from a general perspective, it sucks that people are losing their jobs. But what can you do?

    [–]biskino 9 points10 points  (4 children)

    What can we do?

    I dunno.

    Obediently throw ourselves on the pile of extra people and pray for the benevolence of the tech billionaire oligarchy?

    Yeesh.

    [–]afraidtobecrate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    You can't stop the advance of technology. Clothmakers tried destroying the looms, but the looms only got more popular.

    Even Duolingo itself is a threat to the jobs of language teachers and tutors.

    [–]DatingAdviceGiver101 2 points3 points  (2 children)

    Unless a huge number of people stop using Duolingo over this, us peons have no say in whether they fire contractors in favor of AI.

    Duolingo and life as a whole will go on whether or not you stop using "billionaire tech" as a form of protest.

    [–]Kaloya_Thistle -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

    Start thinking for yourself instead of jumping on the "billionaire tech is bad" bandwagon. Why do you suppose so many people are panicked about the onset of AI in the workplace? My theory: Let's be honest. Many workers (translators included) are self-styled "knowledge workers," "educators," and "creators." AI is now in the process of humbling many self-aggrandized contractors who don't want to accept the fact that a language model can do their jobs. To them, "automation" is entirely acceptable in a warehouse or factory but not, heaven forbid, in an office setting.

    [–]Wolf_Death_Breath -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    AI language models suck dude.

    [–]Effective-Ebb1365 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    You can fail on purpose, so AI gets confused

    [–]Christy427 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    The AI won't be using users as training data for translations. AI only learns from what it is told is learning data.

    [–]andybossyN:F:B1:learning: 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    I don't learn a language to communicate with an ai so why would I want it to be taught by an ai

    [–]toughguy375Learning 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Say enshittification in other languages

    [–]CryptographerMedical 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    My heartfelt sympathy on losing your job.

    I'd prefer humans did translations tbh. One of reasons I joined was there was a human behind translations.

    I'm learning Italian at the moment and paid an annual subscription

    [–]Jumpy-Fan-112 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I‘m sorry to hear about your job situation. I am not surprised that a company would use AI on the chance that it saves them money and increases their profits, but I still think it’s a pity. Best of luck to you with your future career! 🤞

    [–]ItsMoiAgainNative 🇨🇦🇫🇷 Fluent 🇨🇦🇬🇧 Learning 🇳🇱 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    So you are saying that « The turtle is speaking Dutch with the ball » was thought of by a human ? I think I am ready to try something else.

    [–]Warpedlogic31 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Duolingo has been using AI for years though, right? I thought I heard something about it in one of the talks from the latest conference they had.

    [–]Cultural_Play_5746[🍰] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I didn’t really look into it when I started paying, but tbh I just figured it was always ai

    [–]Samuel_JourneaultNative Fluent hc Learn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    It was humans who decided to teach us to say the boy drinks my milk? I always believed it was a random choice.

    [–]Ok-Initiative3388 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Good for the stock.

    [–]bananabenita 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I stopped using them because it felt like all they wanted was money money moneeey. There are better ways to learn.

    [–]Potato_Donkey_1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I'm working on improving two languages, and getting beyond the basics with two more. I haven't seen any decline in quality.

    Sorry about your job loss.

    [–]_Honorspren_ ---> 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    So if they're paying less workers the price of super should go down right?

    ................. right?

    [–]Ralitscious 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Damn. That sucks. At least they kept 2 to check the ai. Until it can also that tmi guess. I wonder if learning multiple languages will become obsolete due to AI.

    [–]Scared-Ad-1020 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Yes. Particularly as a subscriber.

    [–]pianoceo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    If it allows them to speed up their mission of making quality education accessible to all, then I’m 100% here for it.

    My position assumes that quality sustains its current level. I find it irrelevant where the translations come from if the outcome is just as good.

    [–]Praise-AI-Overlords 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Imagine being braindead to the point where you imagine that the human translators aren't using AI.

    [–]nirbyschreibt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Getting AI do the handiwork and employ humans to review this work is a wonderful thing. I see AI as the 21st century steam machine or robotic arms at conveyer belts.

    Of course it is sad if people „loose“ their job to a machine. But on the other hand we are usually talking about tedious and rather boring work. Manual work always is a source for errors. History shows that people always found new fields of work. And AI still needs improvement and development. Someone has to supervise it. The field for voice to text is still widely unexplored.

    So I feel rather excited to use software that is mainly AI created if this is transparent and copyrights are respected.

    [–]Yorks_Rider 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    It fairly common nowadays for translations to be done by machine and corrected by humans. I am afraid that Duolingo is just following the general trend.

    [–]ChilliousS 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Does it matter? Nope

    [–]CrisTHian1986 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I hope prices of Duolingo Super will be adapted to the new circumstances.

    [–]MediocreHelicopter19 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    In a few years you won't need to learn new lenguages anymore and IA will take over Duolingo

    [–]exjobhere 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I’d like to think this would make Duo sad.

    [–]Lionblopp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Thanks for the info. Thought about going back to the owl website for learning French again, but not after knowing this.

    Not sure what is sickening more atm. The fact they laid off many people in an industry that's already struggling because of employers using the cheap option with AI, hoping it won't make a difference, or how people compare this to technology replacing dangerous work in coal mines or factories. Last time I checked people don't die early or get disabilities due to unsafe work conditions from translating... m(

    I hope the workers will find a better place to work at in the future.

    [–]qu1j0t3 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    That is foul!

    [–]Speotyto 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Ah this is the straw. I'm deleting the app now.

    [–]VagabondVivant 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Wow. And here I thought removing the message forums was the dumbest idea they'd come up with ...

    I'll be honest, I don't know that I wanna keep giving Duolingo my money after this move. Might be time to take a look at Babbel.

    [–]ozarkants 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I didn't let my subscription renew in December and have been so annoyed at the ads that I was just about to resub. I'm glad I saw this. Do y'all have recommendations for language learning apps that aren't doing the same thing?

    [–]dotSpycheck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Thanks for this, deleted my account because of this, will never support AI work.

    [–]bennymaxxing 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    had a 420 day streak but this is the final straw for me they've let this app go down the drain for a couple years now but AI translations are so bad now it's not even a good learning app atp

    [–]visawyerxoxo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    yeah I'm waving duo and my 420 day streak goodbye :') not only is firing humans for ai awful but duo as a product has been becoming less and less helpful but with ai sentences it's no longer trustworthy, any app is better at this point

    [–]arrivenightly 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Disgustingly, the translations are still coming from human beings. These "AI" only function to any decent degree with a healthy pool of active human translators to scrape from. It's disingenuous, horribly short-sighted and genuinely just fucking stupid to fire your actual translators.

    For the 1000th time, AI does not exist, there is only scraped human labour.

    [–]Dapper_Calculator 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Given that AI right now is really, really far from accurate and reliable, and that the processes for gathering data for AI training is slapdash, lazy and massively prone to error, I think that sucks and will make their training worthless.

    I am going back to my old university Japanese textbooks.

    [–]cjblandford 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I'm sick of seeing AI destroy industries I care about. It felt really weird, but I deleted my profile and app, and will delete my account when I get home later. I don't want to support a company that has no qualms replacing human labor and experience with a program that can only regurgitate what is fed into it. Thank you for sharing your story and for all of your work on this program.

    [–]FewTaro6825 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I wish I didn't buy super last week. Definitely not extending it after this bs

    [–]SynestriaVI 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Not even gonna lie, some of the sentences I got recently had me convinced it already was AI translating and writing them.

    Seriously. "Is that doctor four years old?" Just doesn't seem like a normal sentence.

    [–]SnipingBeaver 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    What is the best place to submit feedback to Duolingo?

    [–]Substantial-Ad-5309 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I don't care. As long as it works as well as it did befor or better, I'm on board.

    [–]FeoAsilion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I was so excited to be nearing my one year streak learning Ukrainian. I wanted to learn it to honour my great granddad who passed away, who would tell me such wonderful stories of his time in Ukraine before WW2. I was diligent, never missed a day in 275 days, five to ten lessons a day, even splurged on a month of Super.

    You’ve broken my heart, Duo. To quote Padmè, “You’re going down a path I cannot follow”. As a writer and novelist in progress, and as a friend to many great artists, I refuse to have anything to do with you anymore. I will be warning everyone I know away from you. I will make sure that everyone knows just how far you’re going to make an extra buck, and how little you care about actually teaching.

    Edit: removed something in Ukrainian I added at the end. I’m angry, but I should have kept it civil. Sorry darlings ❤️

    [–]ElfZep 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    What is puzzling me is that a tool to learn a language has laid off humans who help (revise info) other humans learn a language, and that those humans have been replaced with translating machines...

    I think this is an indicator that we will no longer "need" to learn a language (I am sure AI tools will continue translating exchanges in real-time), which will eventually kill Duolinguo (and similar products).

    [–]ovid10 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    I won’t use them. Any company that does this is hostile to labor, and they don’t get my business. Period.

    [–]LazyField4Native: 🇭🇺 Fluent: 🇬🇧🇮🇹🇩🇪 Learning: 🇪🇸 4 points5 points  (2 children)

    I might let go of my streak for this, absolutely unacceptable.

    [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    I’m gonna be honest AI is way better than most people think it is and this will probably result in better and more prolific content on duolingo

    [–]Derek_Zahav 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    An AI probably won't come up with the hilarious sentences that the Norwegian course has.

    I'll only consider this a win if Duolingo uses AI to ramp up creating courses for new languages, like Persian, Thai, Amharic, and Quechua. There aren't a lot of materials available for these languages, whether AI- or human-made. But I don't expect them to do that any time soon.

    [–]peacelilyfred 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    I would prefer humans. There's nuance to language that I just don't trust AI to get right.

    [–]broem86 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I work in a company that provides machine translation services for customer service. I know it's not directly related to what duolingo does, but the trend is the same. Companies all over the world are looking to replace professional translators or native speakers with cheap, outsourced people using machine translation.

    Generally, the translations can be acceptable. However, there needs to be a lot of additional human translation when text becomes more complex or formality changes or any broad spectrum of variables change.

    I don't see this change as a good thing. It's another tech company downgrading services in search for short-term profit. The quality will inevitably suffer. It always does. I know in my field, when we replace humans, the customer experience always shifts down. The companies know this but it's worth the savings.

    [–]WonderfulWanderer777 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Screw my 180 day-ish streak, I am deleting the app. Why am I giving a chance to the app I use for learning a new language when the said app is saying that there is no longer any need to know a language?

    [–]pikebot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Wow! Duolingo is completely worthless now!

    [–]Sunshine-Moon-RX 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    It's a deal-breaker for me.

    [–]Either-Confidence811 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    May consider cancelling Duolingo and buying an Assimil course instead

    Luodingo isn’t as effective anyway 🦉

    [–]HaltandCatchFire27 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Should have laid off the idiots who got rid of the tree instead.

    [–]munroe4985 5 points6 points  (13 children)

    Got a source? Tried Googling and couldn't immediately see anything about people being off-boarded.

    The whole AI reasoning is possible but purely guesswork, it could be they "off-boarded" a load for languages they no longer support and thus don't need the translators any longer.

    [–]No_Comb_4582[S] 60 points61 points  (12 children)

    I was one of the translations off boarded. I’m so sad.

    [–]No_Comb_4582[S] 34 points35 points  (9 children)

    And I worked in one of their top three languages.

    [–]dcporlandoNative 🇺🇸 Learning 🇪🇸 2 points3 points  (8 children)

    So you were a translator? Or what? Have they already started using the AI translations or is that upcoming? Or are they using AI to check the translations?

    [–]No_Comb_4582[S] 4 points5 points  (7 children)

    They’ve already started using AI to generate content and translations. This is why I was let go as a translator.

    [–]_Conzz_ 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    do you know what happens when people report errors in the translations? those should be checked by humans, right?

    [–]munroe4985 13 points14 points  (0 children)

    Ah that's rubbish. Hope you find new work soon!

    [–]KittenLaserFists 10 points11 points  (0 children)

    Best of luck moving forward. If you were developing training content with multiple languages, you have a unique skillet.

    [–]cerels 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    Well I have asked chatGPT for slang translations and it has been spot on so I have no problem with it as long as is as good

    [–]ComplexNo6454 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    GPT-4V Turbo with 128k CW is surprisingly good at translations. Just make sure you add a paragraph or two full of context too. Also, Gemini Ultra did better than GPT-4 in translation evaluations, so I'm looking forward to that.

    [–]technoferal 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    That explains the weird, unnatural translations to my native language. I can't count how many I've seen where I thought "nobody would *ever* say that."

    [–]shelf_caribou 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    As a user, it matters little to me, so long as the quality control is there. As someone who believes people are more important than profit, I'm sad to see it happen.

    [–]YoWhat_side 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    i absolutely hate this oh my god

    [–]NewBodWhoThisFluent 🇷🇴 🇬🇧 Learning 🇮🇹 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    It's quite obvious when the sentences aren't made by humans, because 1. They don't make sense, and 2. They're often incorrect.

    I have enjoyed Duolingo so far and I'll finish the Italian course, but I'm definitely not paying for AI content when I can talk to chat gpt myself for free.

    [–]-Lysergian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I've canceled my subscription. I've been thinking about it for awhile, ever since they removed comments. I still have it through August next year, but they keep making decisions that makes me realize that me and the company don't see eye to eye...

    [–]Instigated- 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    I’m sorry you were let go. How many people were let go this way? What reason did duolingo give?

    Lots of tech companies have had layoffs this year, more than usual, because high interest rates dry up investment and reduces disposable income of customers, and a significant Silicon Valley bank collapsed this year (taking investor money with it) - so the economic situation is taking a toll.

    Layoffs: https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/tech-layoffs/

    [–]No_Comb_4582[S] 8 points9 points  (1 child)

    I am not sure how many translators were let go. But it was half of my team in one of the top three languages on Duolingo. The reason they gave is that AI can come up with content and translations, alternative translations, and pretty much anything else translators did. They kept a couple people on each team and call them content curators. They simply check the AI crap that gets produced and then push it through. Now courses will share content. So a sentence might be written by AI and then pushed to every course. I personally think it will reduce the feeling of uniqueness of the languages. They’ll all feel the same to me now. This will mean, however, that a ton of content will be generated much more quickly. So I think you can expect huge growth of courses. But at what cost?

    The other contractors who work there are wonderful people. I even had the chance to work on Stories and the podcast. That was fun!

    [–]RSPKM 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    There are nuances of language that AI can not get correct.

    [–]c1nelux 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I vastly trust expert human translators vs AI at the current stage it’s in. It’s really a downgrade for Duolingo, anything to save a buck I guess

    [–]HeavenCatEye 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    This isn't good, AI isn't smart enough to teach us languages. it won't always be right and I would rather learn from actual people and be taught the proper terms than to be taught something incorrect.

    [–]Chijima 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Enshittyfication yayyyy

    [–]unsuspectingmuggle 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    Thanks for the heads up! I have officially started paying for Babbel Live lessons with a human instructor and have deleted Duo for good.

    [–]TurtleyCoolNails 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    This is great until those human instructors are replaced with AI ones. Just some food for thought.

    [–]Spirited_World_9243 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    AI gets things wrong. It is already confusing when I do a search on google translate and different word and sentence structure comes up. Who is right ?

    [–]Hopey_McHope 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    I have abandoned the app. Unacceptable.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Welp it was nice while it lastedadios duo, if I wanted a shitty translation I would have used google

    Also wild since they posted a funko pop art piece just the other day bragging about hiring real artists. They like to have values for clout, but not when it affects the bottom line.

    [–]lilmamphNL11 2 points3 points  (3 children)

    just deleted my account. i don’t think a lot of people realise how awful this is. my partner is currently doing his masters in translation and is quite worried about what AI means for him getting a job after he graduates :(

    [–]Yejus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    It's not awful. Sucks to be your boyfriend, but he should've had the foresight not to get aboard a sinking ship. AI has been steadily getting better at translation for years now.

    [–]TeamPupNSudz 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    i don’t think a lot of people realise how awful this is.

    It's not. Like, at all. I'm sorry your partner is paying thousands of dollars for a degree that will soon be obsolete, but that's on them. It's a good thing that education is getting new better tools and that technological progress is helping enhance peoples' learning. That's what it's for.

    [–]ComplexNo6454 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Seriously. I won the best translation school in my country, but I didn't go because of how obviously weak to AI it is. This was before ChatGPT. This is like middle school level foresight.

    [–]RandomDude_24Native Decent Learning 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Duolingo is a game.

    AI in it's current development state is vastly overrated by the general public (and apparently also CEOs). For those interested here is a video explaining how language models (like chatgpt) work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnA9DMvHtfI

    [–]Away_Pay_536 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    AI is awesome for translations. I think Grammarly may see a similar demise.

    ​

    For those impacted, you can check out mobiusengine.ai - this is a company I founded to help those who are laid off. We helped over 400 clients last year and want to do a lot more this year. all the best.

    [–]Mysterious-Ad-3024 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    I can tell it's AI. I am on Italian and some of the sentences are so stupid and didn't even make sense.

    [–]Axillia 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    do you care that your clothes are made of fabric not hand woven by humans?
    do you care that your cars are not hand assembled by humans in the factory?
    humans losing their jobs to automation has been a thing for over 150 years, there is no REAL difference between manual labor and "thinking jobs" being lost to automation.

    If your job can be done faster and / or cheaper by a machine at acceptable quality loss, if any, it will happen.

    [–]Manic_Mondayy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    This sucks. I'm sorry to hear

    [–]Lightman51 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Given what I paid for a years membership I am surprised they employ many ! A lot of stupid sentences as part of the courses. I assume set by humans?

    [–]CreditAnxious4222 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I don’t like it, but I do see it as likely unstoppable. What I objectively dislike? Is the robotic (Spanish) spoken sentences that I have to play in slow motion to make out and sometimes still can’t discern what they’re saying. if that continues I won’t ever pay for duolingo again.

    [–]padmaxe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Should I drop the application I was using it to keep reminding myself to study everyday and I liked the Duolingo plus. But if it’s probably gonna worsen the Japanese course I don’t want to keep subscribing to it.

    [–]Kat_906357 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    Personally, I hate it unless it's necessary for smaller languages where people aren't readily available to speak it. I like hearing a native tongue more than an ai trying to replicate that. On some ai lessons I take in Spanish, my grandma who was formally a Spanish teacher and is from Panama, literally couldn't understand if the ai was saying, 'ella' or 'ejah' (pronounciation wise.) Of course, some Spanish speakers will pronounce ella as ejah, but she couldn't tell if the ai was or not which shows that ai is not as clear as real human voices. As a side note, no, she is not poor of hearing, and I struggled with the same issue while listening to the ai.

    [–]RandomDigitalSponge |Learning: Level 25 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Sadly, it’s a company that produces a good product (for now) run by the same shifty evil people. Thus it does evil things and will continue to do evil things. Oddly the courses all have pro-union, pro-worker sentences in their exercises. The execs are probably unaware.

    [–]PanningForSaltcy|de|sv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Maybe it doesn't matter. but if they think AI is so good it will replace human translation... What do they think the point of Duolingo is?

    Whether or not I want to supoort these AI companies, I'm not sure. But it feels like Duo wants to remove all human interaction from their service. They made courses great (and trustworthy) with volunteers' curation; the site was great for its helpful discussions; and the gamification even let you follow friends' progress.

    Now, it's AI-created sentences, with no interaction whatsoever. a shadow of its former self.

    [–]Felixir-the-Cat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    This will be my last year with Duolingo - I just renewed the plan, unfortunately, but will cancel going forward. I don’t want an app that relies on AI.

    [–]FemKeeby 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I get it from a business prospective it doesn't make sense to ignore AI but it still sucks :/

    [–]jherara 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I stopped using the service after they ignored the cultural aspects of language learning.

    And they just sent out a New Year's Resolutions email that literally promotes abusive behavior and language. I suspect it was AI generated because the resolutions were more from the perspective of Duo using bargaining, guilt-tripping and the threat of violence to convince users to use the platform. It literally ended with saying that keeping Duo happy would guarantee that users would be safe and happy... from the character's blind rage.

    [–]ThumbstickDrift 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Maybe they could retain a few to answer their support tickets. Seriously 2 weeks going and no help for a paying customer.

    As for AI, it will permeate all industries... Most will be out of work, world economies will collapse, people will beg for a solution and that solution will be a new world order with a new global currency. Once all of your biometric information is obtained, you will be assigned a living pod in a corporate sponsored government high-rise within the boundaries of your nearest smart city and you will be allocated your monthly allotment of digital credits. You will own NOTHING and you WILL be happy.

    Do not downvote this message, speak ill of this message, or even think poorly about this message. All activity is monitored and any dissatisfaction with this arrangement will result in an instant reduction of credits.

    Best of luck to all of those who have been impacted and hope they find an income source for themselves soon.

    [–]cicagorio91 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I was thinking of buying a premium subscription for this year just to support the company, because I don't really need any of the premium features. Now I'm not going to.

    [–]danielgullo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    They need to hire MORE people, not let people go. The app is buggy as hell, there are inconsistencies across platforms (Windows web app vs. Android app vs. iPhone app vs iPad app), the translations are klunky and incorrect in some cases. It's a good start and has a lot of promise but they need to dump another $2-3M into if they want to be THE dominant language learning source out there.

    [–]OiseDoiseFluent in🇬🇧, Learning🇯🇵(N5-N4),🇫🇷 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Humans can understand nuance in language. A.I will struggle. It'll be the same as using Google Translate

    [–]umekoangel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Well I thought about using Duolingo to learn Russian, nope

    [–]GringoLocito 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    Tbh i imagine AI will be more efficient

    Best way to learn a language is still and will always be immersion anyways

    I imagine everyone laid off will enjoy some free time and find something they enjoy more anyways

    [–]Lionblopp 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Yeah I'm really sure the people laid off will have a better life now when they can just lean back and enjoy the freedom of getting evicted because they couldn't pay rent anymore..

    ​

    /sarcasm

    [–]Kaldrinn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Glad to see a LANGUAGE LEARNING APP layoff TRANSLATORS in favor of dumb ACCEPTABLE? AI-generated content. What a time.

    [–]NoPiece1107 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    The lessons in the French A2 level have been so horribly translated by the human contractors, that the past six months with the app have been an absolute slog for me!

    It was absolutely clear to me, after hundreds of examples, that one of the contractors heavily involved in late A1 and A2 French wasn't really bilingual, they were just using Google Translate to pretend they were!

    Whenever they would mark as wrong the most clear, correct answer, using Google Translate would show that their tangentially correct target answer game directly from Google Translate!

    Google Translate is quirky and far from perfect. It loves to translate like a film subtitles translator, substituting heavily paraphrased answers that often scuttle the finer meanings that a closer translation would have captured!

    Maybe not suspect on its own, but when you see a steady pattern of absolutely correct answers not recognized as correct, because they aren't the answer Google Translate gives? Well, it became crystal clear.

    I feel bad for humans replaced by AI. It's going to be a growing issue for the world!

    However, for the Duolingo contractors let go, I'm guessing that the lazy or incompetent French/English language translator who made entire sections of the course grind to a crawl, because they seemingly faked their knowledge to win the job, probably was a factor in making the decision an easier one!

    Blame that person for undermining the argument that human translators bring some added value that AI can't provide!

    Personally, I'm fine with the transition here. I wouldn't have been able to work through the problems with the horrible translation work without the help of ChatGPT!

    [–]EleriTMLH 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    It matters. Generative content is not up to conveying the nuance of language. We might as well all start learning from Google Translate.

    [–]mateisuica -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    I don’t care. I would have never known if this was not on reddit. Maybe when they get more money they will hire back humans to curate. But for now, i just hope they can still survive

    [–]gymnastgrrl -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    As a large language model, I feel that machine-assisted translation is sufficiently advanced to serve the purpose intended.

    [–]Just_Entrepreneur812 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    They are all-in on automation. IMO, it's the reason why so there are so many actual errors in the course.

    [–]Doggie_On_The_Pr0wl -1 points0 points  (3 children)

    What actual evidence do you have that proves Duolingo is replacing them with AI?

    [–]beeldy -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    I'll probably speak with my pocket, this is very disturbing, even if it saves time, money and effort, they make enough to pay employees.

    I'd imagine this is all in the name of profit for shareholders. As a plus user, I'll probably not renew when my sub is up.

    [–]TheTrueNotSoProGàidhlig 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    Well, I've been mulling over focusing solely on ASL instead of Gaelic through Duolingo, since my hearing is getting worse by the day, anyway. Guess this is my sign to jump ship and focus on my needs, not my wants.

    [–]mustFeedTheRich -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    i don’t believe that the AI will be able to keep up with changes in idiomatic language without real people involved.

    idiomatic language can become up to 25 percent or more of how we communicate regularly (and this varies by language and region of course)

    [–]Large_Breadfruit_254 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    It’s unlikely they’re using it for translation. It’s probably generating sentences based on their very specific parameters. But I don’t know for sure. If they are using it for translation it’s probably for the “accepted translations”. They keep a list of like every possible permutation of a translation of a sentence and sometimes they’re huge (like thousands of strings depending on the language) but that’s not something people see. It’s just what the program will accept.

    Anyway, new language models have nothing to contribute to machine translation. Google translate has been using the same technology that’s in ChatGPT literally for years and it still hasn’t replaced translation because the people who design it don’t know what translation is.

    [–]Spencer_Bob_Suefluent 🇬🇧 stinky poo fluent 🇲🇫 others 🇪🇸🇵🇹🇳🇱🇩🇪 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    I think it's fine. AI is the next step forward in technological advancement, BUT they first and foremost must assure that the AI translations are spot on, as NOT seen here

    [–]themaelstorm -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    I'm sorry to hear that but unfortunately this is expected and it's not going to be just duolingo... and it's part of the process. People lost manual manufacturing jobs when we started using robots and such.

    That being said - I don't expect them to fully rely on AI. I'm guessing they'll still keep a part of their structure to validate and double check, which they likely have with contractors too.

    [–]tdondich -1 points0 points  (5 children)

    So, I run a Japanese language learning platform called Nihongo Master. Duolingo is obviously a big competitor for my project. We are a VERY small team (< 5 people) and we'd obviously want to leverage as much technology as possible. We've looked as AI as an assistance tool but certainly NOT as a source of truth for translations, just accepting them as is. There has to be people reviewing translations/approving. Even more important at the beginner level where vocabulary/grammar is so minimal, translations have to take this into consideration.

    It all comes down to trust. You can trust AI for confident translations or you can trust human beings (contractors/employees with differing levels of fluency, native or not). I, myself, still put my faith in people. Plus, laying off a bunch of people to get on the AI bandwagon just feels...wrong.

    I feel that language learning is meant to assist in connecting people. Humans talking to humans. Connecting at a deeper level. When I started Nihongo Master, my goal was to help teach people Japanese so they could connect at a more deeper level with extended family, or friends, or find love or work.

    That being said, we at Nihongo Master DO use AI for creating vocal/audio recordings of pronunciation readings of words just because at mass scale it's hard to do it with native speakers (our entire dictionary has pronunciations).

    So, I guess I'm on a rant here. But frankly, if Duolingo has the money (and they do), they should use that to empower and hire people. Even at my scale (small), if I have the budget to afford a person vs tech to do the job, I'll get the person.

    [–]Jethanded_Wyvern -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    Welp, that's 1379+ days I won't have back.

    I was already mad salty about the removal of non-linear progression and the forums for language practices, but this is the straw that broke the camel's back.

    Goodbye, you wretched owl.

    [–]Thomas_William_Kench -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    Based

    [–]TheAlphyn -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    Paid for Super for this month but canceled next months. Really disappointing.

    [–]TYPH3U5 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    I literally just bought super from the new years sale... come on man....

    [–]dumbassviolinistnative: 🇨🇵 || fluent: 🇬🇧 || learning: 🇨🇳🇩🇪🇰🇷🇯🇵 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Now I know why the translations don't make any sense sometimes😑 tbh I feel like we'll lose some of that human component to translation bc I don't feel like machine can emulate/understand dialect translations/more specific translations the same a translator whose researched it.

    Kind of makes me think we'll see more of these "doesn't make any sense, but grammaticallycorrect" sentences. My sister got one recently in the chinese course along the lines of "is your 4yo son getting divorced soon?" Like bruh😂 I'd rather human translator who at least know what language is, and what is useful to learn and stuff. Idec if the updates come slower for courses if they make it with humans instead of AI.

    I have to say I'm from the animation industry so I have a pre-existing negative opinion about layoffs for ai replacement, but still.

    [–]dcporlandoNative 🇺🇸 Learning 🇪🇸 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I feel bad for those of you lost your jobs. I have been laid off twice. It does suck. I wish you the best.

    And yes, AI is going to impact a lot of jobs. I am hoping I can retire before I get laid off again.

    [–]deeplomatikFrom , learning 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    OP did you get laid off about the same time they started the super Duolingo feature?

    [–]Global-Method-4145 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I would probably be more distrustful of the app, and trying to supplement my learning with additional sources. In my understanding AI is like Wikipedia - it's good for quick surface explanation of complex things, but if you need solid knowledge/skills - you need to dig deeper, and not necessarily only in that place

    [–]Round-Elderberry-460 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Ia there a estimative of how many people where affected?

    [–]Ragwall84 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I mostly care about the quality of the content. Honestly, I'm getting frustrated seeing the same sentences all the time. I want to learn Russian, but the Russian course is a joke. So many useless words.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I have used Duo in the past, It was helping me build vocabulary in Indonesian, but even the English is often terribly wrong. They've even closed some of the discussions down on things. so it's reeally becoming an almost worthless site.

    [–]BuzzwoofersNative: 🇬🇧 | Learning: 🇷🇺🇩🇪 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    i think they’re gonna end up knowing even less languages now because i was told from an ai chatbot that ai only knows the language of the country it was made in

    [–]Life-Bet549 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Well, clearly AI is not the answer at this point, I don’t think we can trust it (at least not yet, my opinion may change in the future). I think Duolingo's choice on relying on it almost exclusively and firing all these people was way too premature (in addition to heartless). I have already cancelled my paid subscription as I can’t trust it to teach me correctly. And as soon as it expires, I will delete the app and use something else. It was convenient, but that was it. I will keep following this sub, to check if things change for the better.

    [–]Life-Bet549 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Maybe the future, but clearly not here yet.

    [–]FindingFilene 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    As far as Duo concerns me, I've been the antithesis of their ideal user.

    I started thanks to their Spanish Podcast, and decided to learn Arabic through Duo.

    The thing is, Rosetta Stone taught me more Japanese in a few weeks than Duo taught me Arabic in half a year.

    Duo's ads were blocked on my network, and I hated having the app suggest/"nudge" me when to reuse it. I don't like gamified app engagement, so when I saw the methods of getting purple trophies changed and require even more earned Gems, I felt that Duo didn't care how much I actually learned. They only cared about how much I grinded in their app.

    That's all Duo is to me: having a user stake and share in the attention economy. They'd get bought out or undermined like any other public service is or was. Payless Shoes, RiteAid , Gamestop, Sears, Kmart,

    Duo is only still around because they're playing this game. If you learned a language through Duo, stop. Try Rosetta Stone. Maybe Babel. It's a bit late as they just ended big sales at Woot and on their site (Rosetta at least,) Demo, watashi no nihongo wo motto II desuka,

    Compared to my Arabic. I just wish Rosetta would get an Amazon app again.

    Bye, Duo. 🤷‍♀️ James Baldwin from Hampshire College would be wagging his finger at you, I think.

    [–]Damienkillcannon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    When I heard what DuoLingo was doing, I stopped paying for them. I still use it for free though to learn my 'native' language (Gaelic). Why because using it free costs them money, and as long as they don't start filling the space with forced advertisements. I can continue to leech money off their execs. Until the point where they're forced to do ad revenue and at that point I hope there's a good replacement that I can jump ship to.

    [–]EastlandMall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Wow. Just realized that in the future some people will have AI sourced accents and pronunciations after listening to large amounts of AI generated content.

    [–]AverageShitlordSpeaks: | Learning: 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    That explains a lot about why the English sentences I encounter in my French course have gotten markedly worse over the past few weeks and why my answers (which are grammatically correct, but use some Quebecois terms) started getting rejected more often when they were allowed through in the past.

    [–]Knillawafer98 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

    [–]Knillawafer98 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

    [–]SterlingNano 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    This pisses me off. Had I seen this threads a few days ago, I wouldn't have renewed my annual Super subscription.

    Actually what is the point of the app, if I'm not learning from people? The nuance isn't there. FUCK.

    [–]Age_of_the_Penguin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Whelp, bye bye 800 day streak 😢

    [–]madebyluque 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Well, Duolingo is over for me.

    [–]jessbone98 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    What can we do to possibly fight against this? I know cancelling subscriptions will help but can we contact the company to let them know our dissatisfaction? Can we review bomb the app? We can't just sit back and say oh well.

    [–]gnomemilk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Well, guess I’ll just let streak die then

    [–]missy20201N: L: 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I find this disappointing as hell. Regardless of whether AI can do it -- which is questionable, considering some of the wonky translations and the audio errors I and others have experienced with the AI TTS character voices -- I find it despicable to lay off human workers to use AI to save money. I was afraid this would happen.

    DL seems to be more in it for money than anything else these days. I'd prefer it to be like it was, with human employees and a forum and all that, with a base subscription fee, than to remain free but have AI driving it and with no user interactions on forums. What a shame. I was considering if I wanted to buy Super this year, but I think instead I will finish out my current lessons (I'm almost done) and then stop using it. There are plenty of other resources that explain the grammar better anyway

    [–]MJSpiceFluent , Learning 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Just came across this. Am seriously considering giving up Duolingo after this. They need to address this matter asap or they'll be losing a lot of loyal users.

    [–]MakiiZushii 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Ah lads not again. Seems this is all you hear these days.

    Such a shame I took up Super for their discounted yearly price on New Years, now they have my money and even if I cancel it’s a lot of money :(

    [–]GD_milkman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    This sucks. I'm deleting the app.

    [–]Marth8880 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Time to move to LingQ...

    [–]KiboShib 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I think it's inevitable, and such things will only get larger over time

    How people would respond to this, we don't know, but sometimes the answer is right in plain sight

    Duolingo's market cap is 8.8 billion USD

    It would be amusing if laid-off workers make more from an AI meme coin than from Duolingo equity

    Like Elon Musk said: "The most entertaining outcome is the most probable."

    <image>

    [–]Charlocks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Seriously? Well time to use Ad Blocker. :) And yeah I have not spend a dime on this app, I thought of it when I have more free time to learn come this Spring, but now I wouldn't anymore.

    I was hoping they'd eventually teach Hokkien/ Fujian some day, it's not a language that is commonly taught anywhere or in school, and mostly passed down by who you are surrounded with.

    [–]crownedlaurels176 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    The max subscription already wasn’t sitting right with me, and this is the last straw for me.

    I think if enough people (especially long time users with streaks over a year) publicly/visibly said they were breaking their streaks, canceling super if they have it, and migrating to other apps until they roll back this decision, I think they’d have to do it.

    The streaks are a visual representation of who their most valued users are, and there are so many alternatives that it would be a fairly easy boycott to persuade a mass of more casual users to join to protest AI taking jobs in general. My streak’s not nearly as crazy as a lot of the people in this sub, but I’ll let the 664 days go if y’all will 💪🏼

    (Canceling super regardless, though… it hasn’t been worth it for a couple years, but this is what makes me really want to withhold my money)

    [–]ravens_and_foxes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Concerned, like someone else stated, about the nuances of language and cultural learning and understanding that can only come from native residents and speakers of these languages. Especially things like slang or niche references... Idk... It is a little sad.

    Distantly related, it makes me think about how other industries will be facing layoffs due to AI being more efficient at their job and if mass unemployment will be factored into social services and how that's going to change society and humanity.

    [–]iDoAiStuffFr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    thats how it will go for developers eventually. we will just review AI code

    [–]asokarch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Wow

    [–]kimjackie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Email written by AI?

    [–]Simplevice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    What was the pay, if you dont mind me asking?

    [–]LetoAtreides82 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Sorry to hear that. Did you at least have a 401k from Duolingo or was that not offered to you?

    [–]MJSpiceFluent , Learning 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    This is sad. I'm so sorry this happened to you.

    [–]wild9 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I've been using Duolingo for around a decade now and it sucks that they've thrown out all that goodwill. Do you have any suggestions on apps to replace it with? I'm not going to support a company that kicks its employees to the curb like that.

    [–]Kevin-W 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Sorry about your layoff. This is a why one should never be loyal to their employer because they will never be loyal to you. I hope you're able to find a new job soon.

    [–]fezzinate 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Wait, "Big Layoff" means 2 of 4 contractors? Or were there much wider layoffs outside your team?

    [–]No_Comb_4582[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Much wider layoffs outside team.

    [–]Doggie_On_The_Pr0wl 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Do you have real proof that they replaced the employees with AI? That email doesn't prove it.

    [–]No_Comb_4582[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    They admitted it. Search “Duolingo AI” and you’ll see articles that contain a statement from Duolingo. I believe they released the statement yesterday.