Ever since their content is being created or at least sub crrated by AI the quality has gone down noticeable, ive seen so many incorrect sentences which is shit when trying to learn a language. And if i, as a beginner learner can figure out wrong sentences what the actual fuck is ai doing?
Duolingo has been using AI for a bit at least for their content, and it sucks
This email makes no sense.
Let me paraphrase them:
We bet on mobile and won big. AI is great. AI tutors are a thing.
Therefore we’ll get AI to understand our codebase and get it to fo stuff people did before
This isn’t “betting on” AI. This is outsourcing to AI.
You can be an AI company (theoretically) - have people make AI models that are then deployed. Note the lack of recursively, made-by-AI-for-AI products and services.
Tbh, Duolingo was always a gimmick. It doesn’t teach you a language. It teaches you small snippets of 5-10 words each with little to no grammar. It’s repetitive and boring. It was that way before the lives they said they’d never add.
They lost me as a user when they rolled out lives.
Now, I hope they lose someone else.
Duolingo has potential. But learning a language always required a large time investmant, and it always will.
I assume its lessons will only get worse than they already are.
AI could make Duolingo better because it doesn’t teach a language in its current state. It could explain to the user why their answer is wrong and offer exercises. But instead of doing that, they simply replace employees to save money? What a garbage company. It’s a shame their app is so popular. It gives people nothing but a false sense of learning.
It could explain to the user why their answer is wrong
FWIW that feature has existed in the premium version for about a year or so
I abandoned Duolingo 6 months ago. If that’s true, they failed to advertise that to me. In any case, with modern llms you don’t need Duolingo for that. You can ask them. You can copy-paste any article on a subject that interests you, and ask an llm to simplify it to your A1-A2 level. You can ask it to generate exercises, to explain things. Flashcards? Please, Anki is free.
When I got rid of Duo, it had removed the crowd sourced explanations and only had the super-premium support in select countries, so even if I wanted to subscribe to it, as a non-American, I couldn’t.
Mind you, I didn’t want the AI-based version because yeah. I could use Anki + ChatGPT for free.
Neat. Here’s how you can delete your account: https://www.duolingo.com/help/delete-my-account-and-data