The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) is taking a toll on the workforce at the owner of popular language-learning app Duolingo. The company told Bloomberg it was cutting 10% of its workforce, just months after its CEO said Duolingo was relying more on generative AI to develop its content.
Earlier, an anonymous Duolingo employee reported on Reddit that Duolingo had cut a large number of jobs. He said that in December 2023, Duolingo cut a large percentage of their translation contractors. This was because the company realized that AI could do these translations in a short amount of time and save money.
The Redditor said he worked at Duolingo for five years as part of a team of four. But the team has now been cut in half as AI takes over the task of creating content and translating for Duolingo courses. He described the remaining two people as simply reviewing the AI content to make sure it’s acceptable.
Duolingo is ditching human translators in favor of AI
Meanwhile, speaking to PC Mag , a Duolingo spokesperson said these are not layoffs, as the employees were due to finish the project at the end of 2023. He said the company had tried to find replacement roles for each employee before the shutdown, and that human experts are still heavily involved in creating Duolingo's content.
Duolingo's job cuts are sparking a debate on Reddit about whether the company is justified in tapping AI to replace jobs once done by humans. Concerns are growing about creative AI taking away jobs from humans. OpenAI's ChatGPT and other chatbots have shown that the technology can write articles, create professional artwork, narrate content with multiple voices, and even write computer code.
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