Duolingo is not going through a good run and that is mainly due to its executive director, Luis von Ahn, who has played a lot with irony and sincerity in recent months, insinuating that artificial intelligence will end the work of teachers and teachers.
We know that this technology covers everything today, from mathematics to therapy, although that does not mean that it is doing well. In view, it continues to make many mistakes, known as hallucinations, and it is something that even its own creators know how to explain.
However, most companies see in it a clear potential for progress and, among them, is Duolingo, whose executive director has repeatedly expressed their interest towards it. So much so that it has come to say that AI is better than teachers and that only this profession will continue to exist because nurseries are needed.
Actually, these statements did not surprise many, because, shortly before, the company had taken a decisive step in its business strategy, by officially declaring a «priority» company.
This meant that it was going to review its internal processes, redefine the hiring of personnel and redesign its equipment structure under the Underground of AI. Well, it seems that it is now taking its toll.
Duolingo collapses in the stock market
According to the latest records, Duolingo has suffered a collapse in the stock market of almost 40%, from $ 525 to $ 327 the price of its action, which could be explained, precisely, for that technology that fascinates Luis von Ahn and half half the world.
What happened was that Openai, a company directed by Sam Altman, made a curious demonstration of his latest language model comparing it to Duolingo’s abilities. In it and in just a few minutes a personalized web application was created with which the user could learn a language.
This means that, regardless of a business strategy, far from application developers and experts in software to smartphonesan application based on a single text prompt to learn French was launched.
«Create a beautiful and interactive web application for my partner, who speaks English, so that he learns French,» one could read in this order, in which it was also indicated that this application should be «very attractive», that he could show his daily progress and that he incorporated «a variety of activities.»
Among them, didactic and questionnaire cards, that is, something suspiciously similar to what the famous application of the green bird has offers that, of course, began to tremble as soon as you know what it was capable of doing GPT-5 in about 3 minutes.
Learning languages is not a game
It should be remembered that in this demonstration, Openai managed to develop an application very similar to Duolingo because it opted for a characteristic element of this other platform. This is the game, since even a kind of snake was shown, the snake game that invites users to eat some objects and avoid others.
That is precisely the great condemnation of the app, as several users have coincided, who have come to say in forums such as Reddit that «Duolingo is the tinder of language learning» and that it is «unnecessarily gamified.»
While some consider that «gamification is the essence of the application», in the words of a user identified as Pepperoonies, others, such as Linuxusr believe that «the pile of melose rewards» offered by the app «are super annoying» and consider that the only achievement «of learning a language is to learn it.»
Know How we work in NoticiasVE.