Did the Duolingo mass layoffs of translators really happen?
January 8, 2024 2:24 AM Subscribe
A week or so ago I heard that Duolingo had laid off most of its translators at the end of last year and was going to replace them with AI. When I looked for more information, all I found was a single Reddit post and sites referencing that post, with no statements from the company. I went looking again today and couldn't find a report from a reputable news source. Did the Duolingo mass layoffs of translators really happen?
Duolingo was founded by Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon. Long before Duolingo, he was an extremely big deal in the world of computer science. In fact, he co-invented the concept of the "CAPTCHA" while at CMU, and he co-founded reCAPTCHA, which they sold to Google in ~2010. You might remember that the first real thing reCAPTCHA did was use their CAPTCHAs to digitize books by crowd-sourcing them one word at a time.
All this to say, it is straight up ridiculous to assume that Duolingo decided this last week to get in on the "AI" hype and now they are going to fire everyone and just plug their app in ChatGPT or whatever.
If anything, like hoyland, I'm not even sure Duolingo had any translators in the first place.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:20 AM on January 8, 2024 [6 favorites]
All this to say, it is straight up ridiculous to assume that Duolingo decided this last week to get in on the "AI" hype and now they are going to fire everyone and just plug their app in ChatGPT or whatever.
If anything, like hoyland, I'm not even sure Duolingo had any translators in the first place.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:20 AM on January 8, 2024 [6 favorites]
Duolingo did have contract translators at one point (at least in 2018, when I dated someone who did work for them; it wasn’t her only gig, but she said they paid very well.) The Reddit post includes screenshots of an offboarding email, which would take more effort than it was worth to fake for something like this. What we don’t really know is the extent/scope (the post says “a huge percentage,” which doesn’t tell you much without a point of reference), so it’s hard to say anything definitive about how much this changes operations at the company.
My guess as to why it’s not getting more coverage or a big announcement is that these weren’t full-time employees but people classified as independent contractors, which doesn’t leave you a lot of recourse under US employment law, and that they are retaining some to do QA on the results of the AI.
posted by Kosh at 9:46 AM on January 8, 2024 [1 favorite]
My guess as to why it’s not getting more coverage or a big announcement is that these weren’t full-time employees but people classified as independent contractors, which doesn’t leave you a lot of recourse under US employment law, and that they are retaining some to do QA on the results of the AI.
posted by Kosh at 9:46 AM on January 8, 2024 [1 favorite]
The Reddit post includes screenshots of an offboarding email, which would take more effort than it was worth to fake for something like this.
It is four very unspecific sentences in a screenshot on a reddit account that has only posted on this story, that is extremely low effort to fake.
posted by ndfine at 10:40 AM on January 8, 2024 [2 favorites]
It is four very unspecific sentences in a screenshot on a reddit account that has only posted on this story, that is extremely low effort to fake.
posted by ndfine at 10:40 AM on January 8, 2024 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Bloomberg today:
Duolingo Inc., the maker of language-learning software, is cutting some contractors as the app uses generative artificial intelligence to create more content.posted by General Malaise at 10:55 AM on January 8, 2024 [11 favorites]
About 10% of contractors were “offboarded,” a company spokesperson said Monday. “We just no longer need as many people to do the type of work some of these contractors were doing. Part of that could be attributed to AI,” the spokesperson said.
Response by poster: Thanks, General Malaise! That does seem to answer most of my question. The layoff is indeed real, and it's because of workers being replaced by AI. Hopefully some journalists dig further and find out how many translators were fired and how many remain, if only in percentage terms.
posted by Kattullus at 11:04 AM on January 8, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by Kattullus at 11:04 AM on January 8, 2024 [1 favorite]
Even without AI, I would wonder why they would need the same number of translators over time, since the course material is probably pretty stable after a while. I understand they would need new translators for new language courses but they are added slowly, while the core set of courses would be stable and not need much work. So I would expect a point where a chunk of the translators are genuinely redundant.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:54 AM on January 8, 2024 [7 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:54 AM on January 8, 2024 [7 favorites]
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In other words, I am deeply skeptical Duolingo was employing many "translators" to begin with. People to developing the courses, definitely, and ancillary content like the stories and podcasts, but that's not what the reddit post suggests.
posted by hoyland at 7:55 AM on January 8, 2024 [3 favorites]