5 ms·

Duolingo fire translators in favour of AI

10 points by Capstanlqc 3y ago

Capstanlqc 3y ago
Who calls this a success story, and who calls it a dangerous trend? Food for thought! I see it as one of the use cases where AI can be deployed successfully, but I am not confident that it can be replicated easily. Introducing AI in the workflows requires a lot of effort, expertise and investment. A manager's wishful thinking is not enough to take that step.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Just wait when AI tooling can spew application binaries, or API endpoints, instead of source code to be massaged by the human slave. Then lets see how much praise Co-pilot gets.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    This is too simple an outlook. Every time in history that technology has displaced human jobs, there has been outrage and resistance. Yet if we look back at many of these examples, it is clear that people in general are much better off. The outcome of lowering production costs results in lower prices and higher availability for the lowest income bracket. Imagine the cost of a shirt before the industrial revolution, versus the $5 price tag currently at Family Dollar. Yes, the growing pains can be horrible for the people affected, but it's ultimately an unstoppable force and in my opinion a much better approach is to try to help the people affected rather than resist the technology. Imagine what we would have lost if we had let the Luddites force us to continue with human labor for everything. Without a doubt, when it happens to a person it hurts and sucks. I am dreading when it happens to me, which I expect is only a few years away. It reminds me of the old saying: a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Lots of homeless people in industrialized countries beg to differ how great their life turned out to be.
    - tivert 3y ago
      > This is too simple an outlook. Every time in history that technology has displaced human jobs, there has been outrage and resistance. Yet if we look back at many of these examples, it is clear that people in general are much better off. Your "logic" is unsalvageably flawed, in so many different ways. At this point it's just a propaganda meme. Past performance does not predict future results. Bang that into your head until it sticks. Also, "people in general" also would almost certainly be better off after half of humanity was murdered, if you look at it from the perspective of the survivors' descendants. So should we embrace a proposed murder-spree? It "can be horrible for the people affected, but it's ultimately an unstoppable force and in my opinion a much better approach is to try to help the people affected rather than resist" it.
      - freedomben 3y ago
        > Your "logic" is unsalvageably flawed, in so many different ways. At this point it's just a propaganda meme. Past performance does not predict future results. Bang that into your head until it sticks. No, I'm not going to bang something so wrong and counterproductive, into my head. I prefer filling my head with correct and useful information, rather than incorrect and harmful information. Past performance absolutely does predict future results (often). Of course it doesn't guarantee them, but neither does just randomly guessing whatever outcome you want by what makes you feel good and emotionally happy. If you don't look at past performance at all to inform the future, you're kneecapping yourself and any unfortunate person who has to rely on your judgment. There's definitely a pitfall for people who are too extreme on "data driven decision making" but throwing the baby out with the bath water is certainly not the answer. So what's your solution given that it's so simple? Should the government be subsidizing cutlers and wheelwrights to make sure their jobs aren't replaced by technology? Or should we just straight ban factory-made wheels and knives? And should we also be banning automobiles so that grooms and crossing sweepers/pooper scoopers who clear the horse manure from the streets don't lose their job? Where do you draw the line where progression/betterment of society is worth any job loss? And let's say you do ban all technological development since as you say, it's "stoppable." What do you do when an aggressive country develops technologically superior weapons and takes you over? How do you stop them from innovating? Suppose we ban AI completely to save jobs, and some other country (pick one at random) does not. 10 or 20 years from now their AI doctors are diagnosing diseases way better than our human doctors and it's saving millions of lives a year. Are you still glad we saved a doctor's job here even though millions of our people are dying every year for that? Is that really better? As you disagree with me that the advancement of technology is unstoppable, I assume you have some good answers to these questions, and I would (truly) be interested to hear some of them.
ddano 3y ago
Interesting times to be alive in... even Google considers a similiar move based on some news report, but mentioning 30k employees.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  It's fun to see in context of human power struggles. Business, finance, politics, and law were always the power centers since time immemorial. Tech comes out of nowhere and starts to upend the system with salaries competing with the above. Tech inventing its own replacement (none of the other fields are capable of this) may reduce tech power in the end. The others will laugh to the bank.
jsnell 3y ago
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38918279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38918279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38910029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38910029
gchokov 3y ago
Interesting use of "Fire" rather than "let go". Fire will always get more eyeballs though. But these people did nothing wrong.
Arnt 3y ago
Kudos to Futurism for mentioning that it's about 10% of the translators, in the first paragraph even. Several others didn't, and it sort of sounded like "the translators are being replaced by AI", rather different.

10 points by Capstanlqc 3y ago

Who calls this a success story, and who calls it a dangerous trend? Food for thought! I see it as one of the use cases where AI can be deployed successfully, but I am not confident that it can be replicated easily. Introducing AI in the workflows requires a lot of effort, expertise and investment. A manager's wishful thinking is not enough to take that step.

pjmlp 3y ago
Just wait when AI tooling can spew application binaries, or API endpoints, instead of source code to be massaged by the human slave. Then lets see how much praise Co-pilot gets.
- freedomben 3y ago
  This is too simple an outlook. Every time in history that technology has displaced human jobs, there has been outrage and resistance. Yet if we look back at many of these examples, it is clear that people in general are much better off. The outcome of lowering production costs results in lower prices and higher availability for the lowest income bracket. Imagine the cost of a shirt before the industrial revolution, versus the $5 price tag currently at Family Dollar. Yes, the growing pains can be horrible for the people affected, but it's ultimately an unstoppable force and in my opinion a much better approach is to try to help the people affected rather than resist the technology. Imagine what we would have lost if we had let the Luddites force us to continue with human labor for everything. Without a doubt, when it happens to a person it hurts and sucks. I am dreading when it happens to me, which I expect is only a few years away. It reminds me of the old saying: a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Lots of homeless people in industrialized countries beg to differ how great their life turned out to be.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > This is too simple an outlook. Every time in history that technology has displaced human jobs, there has been outrage and resistance. Yet if we look back at many of these examples, it is clear that people in general are much better off. Your "logic" is unsalvageably flawed, in so many different ways. At this point it's just a propaganda meme. Past performance does not predict future results. Bang that into your head until it sticks. Also, "people in general" also would almost certainly be better off after half of humanity was murdered, if you look at it from the perspective of the survivors' descendants. So should we embrace a proposed murder-spree? It "can be horrible for the people affected, but it's ultimately an unstoppable force and in my opinion a much better approach is to try to help the people affected rather than resist" it.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      > Your "logic" is unsalvageably flawed, in so many different ways. At this point it's just a propaganda meme. Past performance does not predict future results. Bang that into your head until it sticks. No, I'm not going to bang something so wrong and counterproductive, into my head. I prefer filling my head with correct and useful information, rather than incorrect and harmful information. Past performance absolutely does predict future results (often). Of course it doesn't guarantee them, but neither does just randomly guessing whatever outcome you want by what makes you feel good and emotionally happy. If you don't look at past performance at all to inform the future, you're kneecapping yourself and any unfortunate person who has to rely on your judgment. There's definitely a pitfall for people who are too extreme on "data driven decision making" but throwing the baby out with the bath water is certainly not the answer. So what's your solution given that it's so simple? Should the government be subsidizing cutlers and wheelwrights to make sure their jobs aren't replaced by technology? Or should we just straight ban factory-made wheels and knives? And should we also be banning automobiles so that grooms and crossing sweepers/pooper scoopers who clear the horse manure from the streets don't lose their job? Where do you draw the line where progression/betterment of society is worth any job loss? And let's say you do ban all technological development since as you say, it's "stoppable." What do you do when an aggressive country develops technologically superior weapons and takes you over? How do you stop them from innovating? Suppose we ban AI completely to save jobs, and some other country (pick one at random) does not. 10 or 20 years from now their AI doctors are diagnosing diseases way better than our human doctors and it's saving millions of lives a year. Are you still glad we saved a doctor's job here even though millions of our people are dying every year for that? Is that really better? As you disagree with me that the advancement of technology is unstoppable, I assume you have some good answers to these questions, and I would (truly) be interested to hear some of them.

ddano 3y ago

Interesting times to be alive in... even Google considers a similiar move based on some news report, but mentioning 30k employees.

mensetmanusman 3y ago
It's fun to see in context of human power struggles. Business, finance, politics, and law were always the power centers since time immemorial. Tech comes out of nowhere and starts to upend the system with salaries competing with the above. Tech inventing its own replacement (none of the other fields are capable of this) may reduce tech power in the end. The others will laugh to the bank.

jsnell 3y ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38918279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38918279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38910029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38910029

gchokov 3y ago

Interesting use of "Fire" rather than "let go". Fire will always get more eyeballs though. But these people did nothing wrong.

Arnt 3y ago

Kudos to Futurism for mentioning that it's about 10% of the translators, in the first paragraph even. Several others didn't, and it sort of sounded like "the translators are being replaced by AI", rather different.