this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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Luis von Ahn says criticism over strategy change shows ‘anxiety’ about technology replacing jobs

Archived version: https://archive.is/20250608171624/https://www.ft.com/content/6fbafbb6-bafe-484c-9af9-f0ffb589b447

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[–] waywardninja@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 hour ago

Cancelled my sub when I found that out. Switched to busuu, comparing the two, busuu and Duolingo seem to have different teachings and I noticed that my ability to understand things (comments) in duo is slowly becoming paywalled on the pro(paid) version... Wtf??! Quality of lessons is also seemingly going down.

Then I heard they are handing user data to ICE (maybe this is a rumor) but it just pushed me away even quicker.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 11 points 2 hours ago

Lemme rephrase that for ya mate:

"I did not anticipate people getting angry that i turned the program into a complete steaming pile of useless shit"

It's not the children who are wrong.

[–] tane6@lemm.ee 13 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

CEOs are overall just not smart and we need to stop that belief

[–] Muffi@programming.dev 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Is there really a single person of this belief, after the whole HBO name-change stupidity? That is still among the worst business and branding decisions I have ever seen.

[–] tane6@lemm.ee 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I would argue that it is one of the most deeply held American beliefs even if it’s not talked about openly. Successful people are almost always viewed as intelligent by default. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

People STILL call Elon a genius ffs

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 hours ago

Of course he didn't expect the blowback. All of the CEOs are in their own little worlds trying to figure out how to make money off of AI. They're all taking their personal money and investing heavily in AI corporations, so they're all very pro AI and couldn't understand why your average person who is pretty sure it's going to make their life worse through jobs or other means would be anti-AI.

[–] grober_Unfug@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 4 hours ago

„AI is creating uncertainty for all of us, and we can respond to this with fear or curiosity.“

How about we respond to this with reason?

[–] Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 4 points 4 hours ago

Still not installing it, Luis.

[–] ooli3@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I Uninstalled. And use Memrise now, it is very fun with video of people to understand the word better

[–] Muffi@programming.dev 1 points 1 hour ago

I also made the switch to Memrise. Its great! Actually a platform made for learning and not just a game disguised as learning.

They also have an option for a lifetime purchase instead of a running subsciption, which I am a huge fan of.

[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 20 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Fire that CEO, he's an idiot.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 9 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

If you have ever been to any major SLT or higher meeting, the phrases "This is the first time I am hearing about that" or "That's not what was reported to me" come up so much that I'm amazed the meetings even finish on time. Plausible deniability of the name of the game.

[–] BigPotato@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

I said "I sent a video recording of this a month ago and received confirmation. Do you not have that?" and got back "I never got that."

"Alright, got it. Thankfully it's not my problem anymore but you know where yours is." and left it at that.

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

That's true and this is not an example of such a situation, because he knew exactly what the reaction was going to be. He probably felt that he could ride that AI bubble away from it, but he knew the reaction was waiting for him.

The other thing about that claim, when it could possibly be credible, is it means that essentially the boss is not qualified to do their job. The one thing they should have done is been chatting with ordinary workers or customers to see what the actual needs are, and they're admitting it to somehow deflect from a bad decision they made but in doing so they've unwittingly shown that they're basically incompetent at their entire job.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 hours ago

I think you misunderstood my meaning. They know. They've known all along. They simply think that saying they don't know and throwing everyone below them under the bus is fine because it's accepted in the business culture here. The CEO is always right because even when they aren't, bonus still gets deposited.

[–] ech@lemm.ee 46 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Luis von Ahn says criticism over strategy change shows ‘anxiety’ about technology replacing jobs

Motherfucker, you're the one that fired slews of employees to be replaced by text-prediction algorithms. It's not "anxiety", you're fucking doing it.

[–] raltoid@lemmy.world 12 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Yeah, he learned nothing. He's just upset that everyone didn't agree with him.

He's going to keep pushing the same nonsense as soon as the attention blows over, and he'll be just as surprised when it goes bad.

[–] Fingolfinz@lemmy.world 24 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

AI could easily replace ceos

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 7 hours ago

Seriously - LLMs are much more adequate to do a CEO's job than an engineer's. Maybe the crazied scramble to push AI "features" into products is to distract customers, workers and shareholders from this fact?

[–] Tronn4@lemmy.world 12 points 12 hours ago

Well prime example of a ceo making a stupid ass mistake. He should be replaced and bonuses removed.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 31 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It's hardly surprising that these people are out of touch when they're constantly surrounded in a bubble of yes-men, cultish AI sycophants, VC investors and other "dark enlightenment" enthusiasts.

It's a pathology, really. A kind of shared delusion in service of global capital.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 2 points 2 hours ago

christ i hate the term "dark enlightenment" more and more it's being used to be an "inevitable" and romanticised spin to reactionary bullshit, stupidity and panic

[–] jontree255@lemmy.world 116 points 18 hours ago

”I’m out of touch with reality” - another dipshit rich guy.

[–] rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world 49 points 16 hours ago

Anti-human little creep, I uninstalled and cancelled my subscription as soon as I heard the news

[–] AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 hours ago

I work for an AI company and even we thought what he said was stupid. I hope he gets what he deserves...but unfortunately I don't know if that's how capitalism in America works as of late.

[–] Kekzkrieger@feddit.org 5 points 10 hours ago

Because ceos habe lost all their touch with reality (if they ever had any)

[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 83 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

That's a plain and simple admission that you are incompetent at your job. You should resign not post puff pieces at FT...

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 24 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I feel like the only job AI would be better suited at would be CEO.

[–] Sludgehammer@lemmy.world 9 points 14 hours ago

I mean, they take in current hype, change a few words and then regurgitate it with slightly different words.

[–] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago

Nah let him keep it longer. I think the company sales can go lower

[–] Empricorn@feddit.nl 40 points 17 hours ago

Way to reinforce the stereotype, out-of-touch rich dude. Most people who actually work for a living see no benefit from AI, and resent it being shoved into every single product, whether it makes sense or not. Oh well, at least you can burn boatloads of VC money while also destroying the environment and abusing intellectual property to train it!

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 hours ago

A serious three-step questionnaire for any subscription service considering AI:

  1. Could your paid centralized service be accomplished by free local models?

  2. Yes it could.

  3. Don't ruin your thing with cloud AI bullshit.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 13 points 15 hours ago

He vomited an assumption on how people would react, and acted on it. The outcome of his actions proved the assumption wrong. At this stage, a sane / rational person would step back and say "...perhaps I should inform myself". But no, this bloody muppet had to vomit yet another assumption - why their reaction was negative. *rolls eyes*

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 16 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Look at his old amas on Reddit to see what kind of guy he is. He's always been a prick.

[–] NotAnotherLemmyUser@lemmy.world 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I looked through a few pages worth of his comments (in English and Spanish) and I didn't pick up on that. Was there a particular response you were thinking about, or might it have been something that is now deleted?

https://old.reddit.com/user/vonahn

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 4 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Around the time they switched to more gamified pathing about two years ago he did not respond well to valid criticisms by people with disabilities in one of those AMAs and it is a major reason why I quit. I will have to dig when I'm on a PC. There were several posts on that subreddit on that topic around that time. I'm not sure if they are still there.

[–] NotAnotherLemmyUser@lemmy.world 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Ok, I think I found it then:

https://old.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/yyw4h9/i_am_luis_von_ahn_cofounder_and_ceo_of_duolingo/iwwsfxw/?context=3

How do you respond to the idea that the new path is much more difficult for neurodivergent individuals to use?

Respectfully, I personally do not agree with this criticism, even though I've heard it before. Anecdotal evidence is one thing, but even in this thread there are a lot of neurodivergent individuals who prefer the path.

How do you feel about the criticism of the new path in terms of overall user experience?

We read it all, and have made a number of changes based on the feedback. However, as I said above the new path is better for usage and we also believe it is on average better for learning, since the in the previous layout people spent a lot of time redoing the lessons they already knew only to extend their streak or compete in the leaderboards, while in the new path the vast majority of lessons actually teach people.

What do you think about the decline in stock value since the new path was implemented? Or is the timeframe too short for you to draw meaningful conclusions?

I like the conspiracy theory :) Given that all metrics are equal or better in the new path, I can't imagine this is related (the stock market has been doing weird things in the last several months, especially for tech companies).

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 4 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Yea, that is part of it anyway. If you notice, he hasn't done one since lol. The app got increasingly more terrible anyway, such is enshittification.

shows 'anxiety' about technology replacing jobs

No, it’s because over the last few years you’ve made your app progressively worse and worse. Almost the entire time I’ve been using this app I’ve seen it get worse and worse. And it’s clear that your push for AI has made it a more boring way to learn.

[–] dylanmorgan@sh.itjust.works 8 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Somewhat related, I just started Spanish lessons using Language Transfer. Fewer bells and whistles but it’s human centric.

[–] gramie@lemmy.ca 5 points 14 hours ago

For my money (and I do donate every month to Language Transfer, because all the content is completely free) this is the best system for actually learning to use a language, as opposed to memorizing words and phrases.

You can do it with YouTube audio, SoundCloud MP3s, or the convenient app that does what it needs to without any extra bells in whistles.

[–] shadowedcross@sh.itjust.works 12 points 17 hours ago

Then you're a fucking idiot, anyone could see it coming.

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 11 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

The Tech CEO Bubble is real and one of the most harmful, even if it doesn't get talked about like our respective political bubbles, geographical bubbles, etc. I believe he was actually that deluded that people were as hyped about AI replacing workers as he was.

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[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 13 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

“I have too much money!”

“I think much too highly of myself!”

“I’m a complete bastard!”

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 1 points 2 hours ago

Bet he's got white pants

[–] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 11 points 18 hours ago

~~I could not correctly predict that most of this is hype and got delusional thinking I could make some quick bucks~~ PEOPLE ARE AFRAID OF TECHNOLOGY

[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 10 points 18 hours ago

As usual tech obsessives are completely disconnected from the general population.

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