Duolingo lays off workers as it leans on AI tools to carry out more tasks

Educational technology app Duolingo has laid off about 10% of its contract workers as part of a shift towards greater use of artificial intelligence (AI). While not all the layoffs stemmed from technology changes, the language learning company did let some contractors go at the end of 2023 in order to facilitate AI-centered modifications in content creation and sharing.

Duolingo stated that no full-time employees were impacted by the layoffs, and it tried to find alternative roles for all those affected before resorting to “off-boarding”.

The company has 24.2 million daily active users, 5.8 million paid subscribers, and over 100 available courses. It has actively integrated AI into its platform, launching a new subscription tier called “Duolingo Max” which uses OpenAI’s advanced language model GPT-4 to add AI-powered features for its users.

Post layoffs, Duolingo expects AI to increasingly take on tasks like generating sentences for courses, creating lists of acceptable translations, and reviewing user error reports for quicker correction. Though it is shifting towards greater AI reliance, the company maintains that human expertise will still be necessary to check AI-completed work.

Duolingo is not the only company replacing human roles with AI. A ResumeBuilder report suggests that 37% of companies surveyed say they replaced workers with AI in 2023, and 44% predict AI will cause layoffs in 2024. Other education tech companies like Chegg and file-storage service Dropbox have also announced job cuts while moving towards AI.

However, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has stated that he anticipates AI will create more jobs than it eliminates.