Duolingo to stop working with contractors as part of ‘AI-first’ approach

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Duolingo is abandoning the use of contractors for content production and translations as part of the language learning app’s plans to be “AI-first”.

The company will “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle,” according to an email by Duolingo co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn that was shared via its official LinkedIn account on Monday, April 28.

Besides phasing out contractors, Duolingo said it will be introducing a few “constructive constraints” such as the use of AI in hiring and evaluating performance reviews. “Headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work,” the company said.

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Duolingo’s pivot away from human language experts comes amid growing fears about the impact of AI on a wide variety of job roles. According to company filings, it had over 600 full-time employees in 2022. A majority of Duolingo’s workforce is said to be contractors.

“Being AI-first means we will need to rethink much of how we work. Making minor tweaks to systems designed for humans won’t get us there. In many cases, we’ll need to start from scratch. We’re not going to rebuild everything overnight, and some things-like getting AI to understand our codebase-will take time,” von Ahn said.

“However, we can’t wait until the technology is 100% perfect. We’d rather move with urgency and take occasional small hits on quality than move slowly and miss the moment,” he said.

Notably, the Duolingo co-founder said that the move was not about replacing the contractors with AI. “It’s about removing bottlenecks so we can do more with the outstanding Duos we already have,” he asserted, adding that Duolingo will provide AI training support for the contractors.

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von Ahn expressed confidence that AI will be able to help Duolingo create a massive amount of content at scale. “Without AI, it would take us decades to scale our content to more learners. We owe it to our learners to get them this content ASAP,” he said.

Earlier this month, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke penned a similar memo in which he said that teams requiring more employees and resources will need to explain why “they cannot get what they want done” using AI instead.

In January last year, Duolingo announced that it was offboarding 10 per cent of its contractor workforce, with plans to use AI models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 for content production and translations. The company has also developed its own AI model called ‘Birdbrain’ capable of personalising language lessons for users.