Duolingo CEO announces that as part of its 'AI first' initiative, the company will stop using contract workers for tasks that can be handled by AI, but also explains that it does not intend to replace employees with AI
Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/news/657594/duolingo-ai-first-replace-contract-workers
Duolingo to phase out contractors as AI takes over tasks - Pittsburgh Business Times
https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2025/04/29/duolingo-replace-contract-workers-ai.html
Duolingo is Going 'AI-First' - Thurrott.com
https://www.thurrott.com/ai/320314/duolingo-is-going-ai-first
Von Ahn announced in an email to all employees that Duolingo will be 'AI first.' Von Ahn posted the full text of the email to employees on Duolingo's official LinkedIn account .
Von Ahn's 'AI First' initiative means that companies will rethink how they work. However, when it comes to rethinking how people work, Von Ahn explains that 'you can't achieve your goals by making small adjustments to a system designed for humans,' and that 'big changes will need to be made to the company's systems in the future.'
As part of this change, Duolingo will introduce some constructive constraints, including changing how it works with contract workers, exploring the use of AI in hiring and performance reviews, and only allowing teams to retain staff if they can't further automate their work.
However, von Ahn also explained that 'Duolingo will continue to be a company that values its employees,' and said that the company's AI-first approach is not about 'replacing employees with AI.' Rather, Duolingo's use of AI is about 'removing bottlenecks' in its work, and for employees, 'I want them to focus on creative work and real problems, not repetitive work.'
The full text of von Ahn's email to all employees is below:
I've said this in Q&As and at many meetings, but I'd like to make it official: Duolingo is going AI first.
AI is already changing the way work gets done. It's not a question of if or when. It's happening now. With such a big change, the worst thing you can do is wait. In 2012, we bet on mobile. While others were focusing on mobile companion apps to their websites, we decided to build mobile first. This decision led to us winning iPhone App of the Year in 2013 and sparking organic word-of-mouth growth since then.
Our bet on mobile changed everything. Now we're making a similar decision, this time the platform shift is AI.
AI is not just a productivity boost. It helps us get closer to our mission. To teach well, we need to create a lot of content, but doing it manually doesn't scale. One of the best decisions we've made recently is to replace our time-consuming manual content creation process with an AI-powered one. Without AI, it would take decades to get content to more learners. We need to get content to our learners, fast.
AI is also helping us build features that weren't possible before, like video calling. For the first time in history, learning content of the same quality as the best human tutors is within our reach.
Becoming AI-first means we need to rethink the way we work. We can't get there by making small tweaks to systems designed for humans. In many cases, we need to start from scratch. However, we don't intend to rebuild everything overnight, and we understand that some work will take time, such as getting an AI to understand our codebase. But we can't wait until the technology is 100% perfect. We believe that moving with urgency is better than moving slowly and missing key moments.
To guide the shift to AI, Duolingo will introduce some constructive constraints, including:
- Gradually stop using contract employees for work that can be handled by AI.
- The use of AI will become part of what we look for in hiring.
・The use of AI will be included as part of performance evaluations.
- Personnel will only be given away if the team cannot automate more of the work.
- Most functions will undertake concrete initiatives to fundamentally change the way they work.
That said, Duolingo will continue to be a company that values its employees. This isn't about replacing employees with AI. It's about removing bottlenecks so we can do more with the talented employees we already have. We want our employees to focus on creative work and real problems, not repetitive work. We're going to support you with more training, mentorship, and job-specific AI tools.
Change can be scary, but we believe this will be a great step for Duolingo, and using AI to get things done means we'll be ahead of the curve.
Lewis
Duolingo is not alone in its AI-first approach. Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke also told employees to show them why AI can't do the job before asking for more headcount.
Shopify CEO tells employees to show them why AI can't do the job before asking for more headcount - GIGAZINE
Related Posts:
in Software, Posted by logu_ii