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Luis von Ahn says criticism over strategy change shows ‘anxiety’ about technology replacing jobs

Archived version: https://archive.is/20250608171624/https://www.ft.com/content/6fbafbb6-bafe-484c-9af9-f0ffb589b447

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[–] jontree255@lemmy.world 129 points 1 year ago

”I’m out of touch with reality” - another dipshit rich guy.

[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 99 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

That's a plain and simple admission that you are incompetent at your job. You should resign not post puff pieces at FT...

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel like the only job AI would be better suited at would be CEO.

[–] Sludgehammer@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I mean, they take in current hype, change a few words and then regurgitate it with slightly different words.

[–] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Nah let him keep it longer. I think the company sales can go lower

[–] ech@lemm.ee 59 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Luis von Ahn says criticism over strategy change shows ‘anxiety’ about technology replacing jobs

Motherfucker, you're the one that fired slews of employees to be replaced by text-prediction algorithms. It's not "anxiety", you're fucking doing it.

[–] raltoid@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, he learned nothing. He's just upset that everyone didn't agree with him.

He's going to keep pushing the same nonsense as soon as the attention blows over, and he'll be just as surprised when it goes bad.

[–] rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago

Anti-human little creep, I uninstalled and cancelled my subscription as soon as I heard the news

[–] Empricorn@feddit.nl 51 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Way to reinforce the stereotype, out-of-touch rich dude. Most people who actually work for a living see no benefit from AI, and resent it being shoved into every single product, whether it makes sense or not. Oh well, at least you can burn boatloads of VC money while also destroying the environment and abusing intellectual property to train it!

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[–] brandon@piefed.social 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's hardly surprising that these people are out of touch when they're constantly surrounded in a bubble of yes-men, cultish AI sycophants, VC investors and other "dark enlightenment" enthusiasts.

It's a pathology, really. A kind of shared delusion in service of global capital.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago

christ i hate the term "dark enlightenment" more and more it's being used to be an "inevitable" and romanticised spin to reactionary bullshit, stupidity and panic

[–] tane6@lemm.ee 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

CEOs are overall just not smart and we need to stop that belief

[–] Muffi@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is there really a single person of this belief, after the whole HBO name-change stupidity? That is still among the worst business and branding decisions I have ever seen.

[–] tane6@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I would argue that it is one of the most deeply held American beliefs even if it’s not talked about openly. Successful people are almost always viewed as intelligent by default. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

People STILL call Elon a genius ffs

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[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Look at his old amas on Reddit to see what kind of guy he is. He's always been a prick.

[–] NotAnotherLemmyUser@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I looked through a few pages worth of his comments (in English and Spanish) and I didn't pick up on that. Was there a particular response you were thinking about, or might it have been something that is now deleted?

https://old.reddit.com/user/vonahn

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Around the time they switched to more gamified pathing about two years ago he did not respond well to valid criticisms by people with disabilities in one of those AMAs and it is a major reason why I quit. I will have to dig when I'm on a PC. There were several posts on that subreddit on that topic around that time. I'm not sure if they are still there.

[–] NotAnotherLemmyUser@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok, I think I found it then:

https://old.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/yyw4h9/i_am_luis_von_ahn_cofounder_and_ceo_of_duolingo/iwwsfxw/?context=3

How do you respond to the idea that the new path is much more difficult for neurodivergent individuals to use?

Respectfully, I personally do not agree with this criticism, even though I've heard it before. Anecdotal evidence is one thing, but even in this thread there are a lot of neurodivergent individuals who prefer the path.

How do you feel about the criticism of the new path in terms of overall user experience?

We read it all, and have made a number of changes based on the feedback. However, as I said above the new path is better for usage and we also believe it is on average better for learning, since the in the previous layout people spent a lot of time redoing the lessons they already knew only to extend their streak or compete in the leaderboards, while in the new path the vast majority of lessons actually teach people.

What do you think about the decline in stock value since the new path was implemented? Or is the timeframe too short for you to draw meaningful conclusions?

I like the conspiracy theory :) Given that all metrics are equal or better in the new path, I can't imagine this is related (the stock market has been doing weird things in the last several months, especially for tech companies).

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yea, that is part of it anyway. If you notice, he hasn't done one since lol. The app got increasingly more terrible anyway, such is enshittification.

[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Fire that CEO, he's an idiot.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you have ever been to any major SLT or higher meeting, the phrases "This is the first time I am hearing about that" or "That's not what was reported to me" come up so much that I'm amazed the meetings even finish on time. Plausible deniability of the name of the game.

[–] BigPotato@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I said "I sent a video recording of this a month ago and received confirmation. Do you not have that?" and got back "I never got that."

"Alright, got it. Thankfully it's not my problem anymore but you know where yours is." and left it at that.

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[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 21 points 1 year ago

Lemme rephrase that for ya mate:

"I did not anticipate people getting angry that i turned the program into a complete steaming pile of useless shit"

It's not the children who are wrong.

shows 'anxiety' about technology replacing jobs

No, it’s because over the last few years you’ve made your app progressively worse and worse. Almost the entire time I’ve been using this app I’ve seen it get worse and worse. And it’s clear that your push for AI has made it a more boring way to learn.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“I have too much money!”

“I think much too highly of myself!”

“I’m a complete bastard!”

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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 14 points 1 year ago

He vomited an assumption on how people would react, and acted on it. The outcome of his actions proved the assumption wrong. At this stage, a sane / rational person would step back and say "...perhaps I should inform myself". But no, this bloody muppet had to vomit yet another assumption - why their reaction was negative. *rolls eyes*

[–] Tronn4@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Well prime example of a ceo making a stupid ass mistake. He should be replaced and bonuses removed.

[–] shadowedcross@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago

Then you're a fucking idiot, anyone could see it coming.

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The Tech CEO Bubble is real and one of the most harmful, even if it doesn't get talked about like our respective political bubbles, geographical bubbles, etc. I believe he was actually that deluded that people were as hyped about AI replacing workers as he was.

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[–] waywardninja@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Cancelled my sub when I found that out. Switched to busuu, comparing the two, busuu and Duolingo seem to have different teachings and I noticed that my ability to understand things (comments) in duo is slowly becoming paywalled on the pro(paid) version... Wtf??! Quality of lessons is also seemingly going down.

~~Then I heard they are handing user data to ICE (maybe this is a rumor) but it just pushed me away even quicker.~~

I don't have proof of this so I take this back but am leaving the text so as to give context to the comments below.

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[–] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

~~I could not correctly predict that most of this is hype and got delusional thinking I could make some quick bucks~~ PEOPLE ARE AFRAID OF TECHNOLOGY

[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

As usual tech obsessives are completely disconnected from the general population.

[–] yarr@feddit.nl 9 points 1 year ago

CEOs are rich enough to live in their own delusional bubble. They are very out of touch with the average person, or their own workforce. This is nothing new.

[–] dylanmorgan@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Somewhat related, I just started Spanish lessons using Language Transfer. Fewer bells and whistles but it’s human centric.

[–] gramie@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

For my money (and I do donate every month to Language Transfer, because all the content is completely free) this is the best system for actually learning to use a language, as opposed to memorizing words and phrases.

You can do it with YouTube audio, SoundCloud MP3s, or the convenient app that does what it needs to without any extra bells in whistles.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 year ago

Of course he didn't expect the blowback. All of the CEOs are in their own little worlds trying to figure out how to make money off of AI. They're all taking their personal money and investing heavily in AI corporations, so they're all very pro AI and couldn't understand why your average person who is pretty sure it's going to make their life worse through jobs or other means would be anti-AI.

[–] AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

I work for an AI company and even we thought what he said was stupid. I hope he gets what he deserves...but unfortunately I don't know if that's how capitalism in America works as of late.

[–] Bronstein_Tardigrade@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He should have asked ChatGPT if there would be any blowback to using an LLM instead of people.

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[–] Kekzkrieger@feddit.org 5 points 1 year ago

Because ceos habe lost all their touch with reality (if they ever had any)

Still not installing it, Luis.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

A serious three-step questionnaire for any subscription service considering AI:

  1. Could your paid centralized service be accomplished by free local models?

  2. Yes it could.

  3. Don't ruin your thing with cloud AI bullshit.

[–] ooli3@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I Uninstalled. And use Memrise now, it is very fun with video of people to understand the word better

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