Latest news with #LuisvonAhn
Times
12-07-2025
- Business
- Times
Duolingo's founder on billionaire life: ‘I guess it's nice not to worry'
W hen the teenage Luis von Ahn left home in impoverished Guatemala City for Duke University, North Carolina, he said to himself: 'If I ever make a million bucks in my life, I'll have reached my American dream.' Now 46, and worth $1.4 billion (£1 billion), it's fair to say America exceeded his expectations. Von Ahn is one of the rare entrepreneurs for whom lightning has struck not once, not twice, but three times — most significantly with his hugely successful learn-a-language app, Duolingo. If you aren't personally doing Duolingo, chances are someone in your family is. More than 130 million people around the world, from Bill Gates to Khloé Kardashian, are studying one or more of its 40-plus languages. Of those, 47 million use it every day — a scholarly army nearly 50 per cent bigger than it was a year ago.
The Star
12-07-2025
- The Star
Opinion: Will Big Tech transform school into an AI video game?
'Why am I learning AI if it's going to eventually take my job?' one of my students asked me at the end of the school year. 'I don't know,' I said. 'I wonder the same thing about mine.' Students are off for the summer, but Big Tech is working hard pitching its brand to schools, marketing its products to students as 'homework buddies' and 'personal tutors' and to educators as 'teaching assistants' and 'work pals,' while undermining the entire field of education and sending out a sea of mixed messages. We all have reason to worry. The dizzying pace at which artificial intelligence has infiltrated schools and dominated the discourse within education has left the classroom a battleground of contradictions. Our fears aren't hyperbolic. Schools in Texas and Arizona are already using AI to 'teach' kids with educators as mere 'guides' rather than experts in their content area. Last year, one of my seniors told me she preferred AI to her teachers 'because I can talk to AI in the middle of the night, but my teachers don't email me back until the next morning.' In May, Luis von Ahn, CEO of the foreign language education app Duolingo, said: 'It's just a lot more scalable to teach with AI than with teachers.' Schools will exist mostly just for child care. And President Donald Trump's April 23 executive order calls for the use of AI in schools, claiming the 'early exposure' will spark 'curiosity and creativity.' This pressure isn't only coming from the White House. Education websites have uncritically embraced AI at a stunning pace. Edutopia used to highlight resources for teaching literature, history, art, math and science and instead is dominated now by AI 'tools' marketed to burned-out, overworked educators to save time. EdTechTeacher and call AI 'knowledgeable colleagues' and 'friendly buddies,' shifting away from teachers' specific subject areas. If this isn't dizzying enough, when we educators are directed or forced to use AI in our teaching, we're criticised when we do. What's really happening in the classroom is this: Teachers are unable to teach the problem-solving skills kids will need as they grow up and are blamed when an entire generation is outsourcing their imaginations to Big Tech. No wonder test scores have plunged, and anxiety and depression have risen. Yet in glossy AI advertisements paid with the billions of dollars Big Tech is making off schools, the classroom is portrayed as student-centered spaces where kids engage with personalised technology that differentiates better than teachers as though it's just another school supply item like the pencil cases on their desks. The kids know it. When I teach grammar, students want to use Grammarly. When we read a book together, they say ChatGPT can summarise it for them in seconds. When I teach them any part of the writing process, they list the dozens of AI apps that are designed to 'write' the essay for them. Students readily admit they use AI to cheat, but they're constantly getting messages to use their 'writing coach,' 'debate-partner' and 'study buddy.' It's always been an uphill battle for educators to get kids to like school. It's part of the profession. 'It's our job to push students, and it's our students' job to resist,' a mentor told me when I was a new teacher. 'In the middle,' he continued, 'therein lies learning.' Wherein lies learning now? Will school become a video game packaged as, well, school? If educators don't teach writing, we're told we're not teaching students how to communicate. If we don't teach reading, we're told we're not teaching them how to think critically. If we don't teach them business skills, we're told we're not preparing them to enter the workforce. Now we're being told if we don't teach them AI, we're not preparing them for their future that consists of what, exactly? The future that's poised to steal their jobs? At the end of the school year in my freshman English class, we read Erich Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front . I asked my ninth graders to choose passages that stood out to them. Many of them chose this one: 'We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men. We are crude and sorrowful and superficial – I believe we are lost.' They noticed the alienation the soldiers feel from themselves. I wondered if it's how they felt, too – estranged from their own selves. Ironically, their discovery showed the whole point of reading literature – to understand oneself and the world better and to increase one's capacity for empathy and compassion. As my mentor teacher told me decades ago, therein lies learning. Our kids have become soldiers caught on the front lines in the battle for education, stuck in the crossfire of Big Tech and school. The classroom – a sacred space that should prioritize human learning, discovery and academic risk-taking – has become a flashpoint in America, and our kids are in the center of it. I recently finished reading The Road Back , Remarque's sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front . The novel dramatises the ongoing alienation of the soldiers once they've returned home from war. 'Why can't you let the kids enjoy the few years that are left to them,' Willy, one of the soldiers pleads, 'while they need still know nothing about it?' Is the classroom going to remain a torched battleground such as the one my students read about in All Quiet on the Western Front – kids hunkering in the trenches of our schools while the adults fight over the eroded terrain of education? Will they become even more cut off from their own selves, just when they're getting to know who they are? – Grand Haven Tribune, Mich.a/Tribune News Service
Chicago Tribune
02-07-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Liz Shulman: Will Big Tech transform school into an AI video game?
'Why am I learning AI if it's going to eventually take my job?' one of my students asked me at the end of the school year. 'I don't know,' I said. 'I wonder the same thing about mine.' Students are off for the summer, but Big Tech is working hard pitching its brand to schools, marketing its products to students as 'homework buddies' and 'personal tutors' and to educators as 'teaching assistants' and 'work pals' while undermining the entire field of education and sending out a sea of mixed messages. We all have reason to worry. The dizzying pace at which artificial intelligence has infiltrated schools and dominated the discourse within education has left the classroom a battleground of contradictions. Our fears aren't hyperbolic. Schools in Texas and Arizona are already using AI to 'teach' kids with educators as mere 'guides' rather than experts in their content area. Last year, one of my seniors told me she preferred AI to her teachers 'because I can talk to AI in the middle of the night, but my teachers don't email me back until the next morning.' In May, Luis von Ahn, CEO of the foreign language education app Duolingo, said: 'It's just a lot more scalable to teach with AI than with teachers.' Schools will exist mostly just for child care. And President Donald Trump's April 23 executive order calls for the use of AI in schools, claiming the 'early exposure' will spark 'curiosity and creativity.' This pressure isn't only coming from the White House. Education websites have uncritically embraced AI at a stunning pace. Edutopia used to highlight resources for teaching literature, history, art, math and science and instead is dominated now by AI 'tools' marketed to burned-out, overworked educators to save time. EdTechTeacher and call AI 'knowledgeable colleagues' and 'friendly buddies,' shifting away from teachers' specific subject areas. If this isn't dizzying enough, when we educators are directed or forced to use AI in our teaching, we're criticized when we do. What's really happening in the classroom is this: Teachers are unable to teach the problem-solving skills kids will need as they grow up and are blamed when an entire generation is outsourcing their imaginations to Big Tech. No wonder test scores have plunged, and anxiety and depression have risen. Yet in glossy AI advertisements paid with the billions of dollars Big Tech is making off schools, the classroom is portrayed as student-centered spaces where kids engage with personalized technology that differentiates better than teachers as though it's just another school supply item like the pencil cases on their desks. The kids know it. When I teach grammar, students want to use Grammarly. When we read a book together, they say ChatGPT can summarize it for them in seconds. When I teach them any part of the writing process, they list the dozens of AI apps that are designed to 'write' the essay for them. Students readily admit they use AI to cheat, but they're constantly getting messages to use their 'writing coach,' 'debate-partner' and 'study buddy.' It's always been an uphill battle for educators to get kids to like school. It's part of the profession. 'It's our job to push students, and it's our students' job to resist,' a mentor told me when I was a new teacher. 'In the middle,' he continued, 'therein lies learning.' Wherein lies learning now? Will school become a video game packaged as, well, school? If educators don't teach writing, we're told we're not teaching students how to communicate. If we don't teach reading, we're told we're not teaching them how to think critically. If we don't teach them business skills, we're told we're not preparing them to enter the workforce. Now we're being told if we don't teach them AI, we're not preparing them for their future that consists of what, exactly? The future that's poised to steal their jobs? At the end of the school year in my freshman English class, we read Erich Remarque's novel 'All Quiet on the Western Front.' I asked my ninth graders to choose passages that stood out to them. Many of them chose this one: 'We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men. We are crude and sorrowful and superficial — I believe we are lost.' They noticed the alienation the soldiers feel from themselves. I wondered if it's how they felt, too — estranged from their own selves. Ironically, their discovery showed the whole point of reading literature — to understand oneself and the world better and to increase one's capacity for empathy and compassion. As my mentor teacher told me decades ago, therein lies learning. Our kids have become soldiers caught on the front lines in the battle for education, stuck in the crossfire of Big Tech and school. The classroom — a sacred space that should prioritize human learning, discovery and academic risk-taking — has become a flashpoint in America, and our kids are in the center of it. I recently finished reading 'The Road Back,' Remarque's sequel to 'All Quiet on the Western Front.' The novel dramatizes the ongoing alienation of the soldiers once they've returned home from war. 'Why can't you let the kids enjoy the few years that are left to them,' Willy, one of the soldiers pleads, 'while they need still know nothing about it?' Is the classroom going to remain a torched battleground such as the one my students read about in 'All Quiet on the Western Front' — kids hunkering in the trenches of our schools while the adults fight over the eroded terrain of education? Will they become even more cut off from their own selves, just when they're getting to know who they are?
Gizmodo
29-06-2025
- Business
- Gizmodo
CEOs Are Quietly Telling Us the Truth: AI Is Replacing You
The fear is real. In meetings, Slack chats, and after-work drinks, one question is quietly eating away at millions of employees: Will AI take my job? In public, CEOs like to sound reassuring. They say generative AI will 'enhance productivity' or 'streamline operations.' But when you actually read what they're telling their own employees, or what slips out in investor memos, the message is chilling: virtual workers are here, and they're not just assistants. They're replacements. Let's take a closer look at what some of the world's most powerful tech CEOs are saying. Not in hype videos, but in official internal messages, blog posts, and investor updates. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently published a company-wide message that sounds reasonable, until you actually read it. 'As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today… We expect this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.' The key phrase? 'Next few years.' That's corporate speak for 2026 to 2028. Not ten years away. This is soon. Jassy is not talking about automating only simple or repetitive tasks. He's preparing employees for a reality where AI replaces entire job categories across the board, and where hiring slows or stops altogether for roles that machines can now do. In a memo posted to LinkedIn, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn was even more blunt. 'Most functions will have specific initiatives to fundamentally change how they work… Headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work.' Translation: No more hiring unless your job is impossible for AI to do. The company is betting that most teams will soon need fewer humans. Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke shared a similar directive on X: 'Before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI… What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?' Lütke is openly asking managers to reimagine teams as if AI agents are already integrated, and to justify why any humans are still necessary. — tobi lutke (@tobi) April 7, 2025The message from these CEOs is clear: human employees are now the last resort. The new default is automation. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently stated that AI is already doing 50% of the work within his company, shortly before announcing another 1,000 job cuts. The CEO of Klarna, a major fintech company, was even more blunt, revealing that AI has already allowed the company to reduce its workforce by 40%. These aren't future scenarios. This is already happening. The reason for this sudden shift is the rapid evolution of AI technology. As OpenAI CEO Sam Altman explained in a recent podcast, the latest 'reasoning models' have made a critical leap. In simple terms, these AI systems can now do more than just find information; they can 'think' through complex, multi-step problems. Altman suggested these models can reason on par with someone holding a PhD, meaning they are now capable of performing the high level analytical tasks once reserved for highly educated humans. This capability is being actively harnessed. Three sources working at major AI labs told Gizmodo that they are training powerful models to perform real world tasks in nearly every 'knowledge work' profession, including banking, financial analysis, insurance, law, and even journalism. These sources, who requested anonymity as their contracts prohibit them from speaking publicly, described how their work is used in side by side comparisons with AI models to refine the technology until it can produce professional grade output with minimal errors. Virtual employees are already doing our jobs; the current phase is simply about making them more perfect. The 'next few years' Jassy spoke of may be closer to two years at most. Consider the tech industry's recent layoff trends. In 2024, 551 tech companies laid off nearly 152,922 employees, according to data from The pace has accelerated dramatically this year. In just the first six months of 2025, 151 tech companies have already laid off over 63,823 people. On average a tech company cut 277 workers in 2024. If that rate is maintained for the rest of the year, the average number of layoffs per tech company in 2025 would soar to 851, roughly three times the 2024 average. While there is no direct evidence linking all these layoffs to AI, the trend is happening during a period of record economic strength. The Nasdaq just closed at an all time high, and eight of the world's ten largest companies are in the tech sector. Profitable, growing companies are shedding workers at an alarming rate, and the quiet implementation of AI is the most logical explanation. Tech CEOs won't tell you outright that you're being replaced. But the memos speak for themselves. AI is already here, and your company is likely building a roadmap to automate you out of your role. One internal pilot project at a time. One chatbot at a time. One hiring freeze at a time. If you want to understand what's next for the American workforce, don't listen to the marketing. Read the footnotes in the CEO's blog. Because they're already telling you the truth.
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'I'm Not Sure There's Anything Computers Can't Really Teach You,' Says Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn — Predicts AI Will Replace Most Human Teachers
Computers will soon be capable of teaching virtually everything, says Duolingo (NASDAQ:DUOL) Chief Executive Officer Luis von Ahn. He made the claim on the May 8 episode of the tech-focused "No Priors" podcast. Von Ahn argues that mountains of learner data and generative AI now let software personalize lessons better than any classroom, signaling a seismic shift for education worldwide—one that could leave human teachers playing a different role. Don't Miss: Maker of the $60,000 foldable home has 3 factory buildings, 600+ houses built, and big plans to solve housing — Deloitte's fastest-growing software company partners with Amazon, Walmart & Target – Many are rushing to He said that Duolingo's algorithms predict a student's test score before the first question appears, adjusting difficulty to keep motivation high. That predictive power, according to von Ahn, makes machine tutors "more attentive than any instructor juggling 30 students." "I'm not sure there's anything computers can't really teach you," von Ahn said during the podcast, stressing that teachers will still provide childcare. The company is acting on that belief. An internal email posted on Duolingo's LinkedIn page last month described an "AI-first" pivot that will phase out many contract content creators; full-time roles remain, but software now drafts, edits, and scores lessons faster than people, The Verge reported. Trending: Invest where it hurts — and help millions heal:. "AI helps us replicate what a good teacher does. A good teacher helps you learn material, stay engaged, know where your weaknesses are, where your gaps are, so that you can focus on those things and get better," said Duolingo Chief Financial Officer Matt Skaruppa, who delivered a similar message in a 2024 Morning Brew "After Earnings" podcast. Investors appear encouraged. A May 1 shareholder letter highlighted 10 million paid subscribers and 38 % revenue growth year over year. According to the letter, much of that momentum comes from AI-generated course material that halves production time. Washington has taken notice. President Donald Trump's April 23 executive order calls for public-private partnerships to bring AI tools into K–12 classrooms—both to boost AI education and help schools use smart tech to modernize and improve education is experimenting. Arizona State University unveiled an AI academic-advising pilot in March that routes routine questions to a GPT-style assistant. Skeptics remain. Teachers' unions argue that pedagogy is more than flashcards; von Ahn counters that the coming disruption "is a mind shift," not a pink-slip apocalypse. With 116 million monthly users and hundreds of frequently running A/B tests and educational experiments to optimize its learning model, Duolingo is at the front line of that shift. Whether classrooms become study halls policed by chatbots—or remain human-led with algorithmic backup—may hinge on how well those experiments keep students tapping the green owl. Read Next: Here's what Americans think you need to be considered wealthy. Peter Thiel turned $1,700 into $5 billion—now accredited investors are eyeing this software company with similar breakout potential. Learn how you can Image: Shutterstock UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? This article 'I'm Not Sure There's Anything Computers Can't Really Teach You,' Says Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn — Predicts AI Will Replace Most Human Teachers originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Sign in to access your portfolio
