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Can someone explain the point of this article? How does any of this matter unless 1. customers stop using this app or 2. all employees quit. Neither one is hap

Can someone explain the point of this article? How does any of this matter unless 1. customers stop using this app or 2. all employees quit. Neither one is happening, especially the one where customers leave, because customers are not using this app as a form of charity to fund salaries of contractors.

sandspar 1y ago
There's a group of news readers who dislike CEO's and dislike AI. Many of these people have also heard of Duolingo. "CEO of [company you've heard of] makes an AI mistake" is a surefire way to get clicks.
- zugi 1y ago
  That seems about right. Hacker News was once a more reasonable alternative to reddit, but these days sometimes it's reasonable, and sometimes it displays the same hive-mind reactions, depending on the thread. The app is absolutely gamified, but I've never paid them a dollar, waste about 1.5 minutes a day ignoring ads, and in exchange for nothing I get moderately useful foreign language learning. The gamification keeps me at it, where past study approaches eventually petered out. The use of AI in this and other tools is inevitable. The CEO certainly oversold it in his initial announcement, but the weird reaction of people stopping using the app because Due Lingo is going "AI first" seems inconsistent. Are people going to stop using Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Nvidia because they're all-in on AI too?
  - regularjack 1y ago
    It is not at all surprising to me that humans care about other humans. Only a minority of humans are sociopaths, fortunately.
  - sandspar 1y ago
    Note that this reasonable comment about HackerNews groupthink has been downvoted to grey.
lazide 1y ago
A lot of customers left. And, typically CEO’s say things like this to try to scare/get leverage on employees.
- retnuhllort 1y ago
  Like at least 500? I'm sure that will hurt.
  - minimaxir 1y ago
    Enough that the CEO had to do damage control, which is the absolute last resort for a PR disaster.
    - retnuhllort 1y ago
      All ceos constantly do pr, and respond to media coverage. This is literally another just another day.
      - lazide 1y ago
        Sure, and X nee Twitter is just doing better and better.
        retnuhllort 1y ago
        Don't get what you said. Is this about X if so I don't get the ref.
- BoorishBears 1y ago
  Not buying a lot of them left over this. The reaction to their AI announcement doesn't feel organic at all with oceans and oceans of content creators flooding feeds with samesy half-deprecating bashes of them using AI. I think for every person who genuinely was put off, even more either didn't care, or were using ChatGPT for language learning and would try it to see what they mean by an AI-first approach. - And for anyone who thinks they'd never take that kind of bad publicity on purpose: this is the brand that "killed" their beloved mascot a few months ago and similarly managed to saturate multiple channels with creators bashing them for that. This is straight out of the "stop hiring humans" playbook.

sandspar 1y ago

There's a group of news readers who dislike CEO's and dislike AI. Many of these people have also heard of Duolingo. "CEO of [company you've heard of] makes an AI mistake" is a surefire way to get clicks.

zugi 1y ago
That seems about right. Hacker News was once a more reasonable alternative to reddit, but these days sometimes it's reasonable, and sometimes it displays the same hive-mind reactions, depending on the thread. The app is absolutely gamified, but I've never paid them a dollar, waste about 1.5 minutes a day ignoring ads, and in exchange for nothing I get moderately useful foreign language learning. The gamification keeps me at it, where past study approaches eventually petered out. The use of AI in this and other tools is inevitable. The CEO certainly oversold it in his initial announcement, but the weird reaction of people stopping using the app because Due Lingo is going "AI first" seems inconsistent. Are people going to stop using Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Nvidia because they're all-in on AI too?
- regularjack 1y ago
  It is not at all surprising to me that humans care about other humans. Only a minority of humans are sociopaths, fortunately.
- sandspar 1y ago
  Note that this reasonable comment about HackerNews groupthink has been downvoted to grey.

lazide 1y ago

A lot of customers left. And, typically CEO’s say things like this to try to scare/get leverage on employees.

retnuhllort 1y ago
Like at least 500? I'm sure that will hurt.
- minimaxir 1y ago
  Enough that the CEO had to do damage control, which is the absolute last resort for a PR disaster.
  - retnuhllort 1y ago
    All ceos constantly do pr, and respond to media coverage. This is literally another just another day.
    - lazide 1y ago
      Sure, and X nee Twitter is just doing better and better.
      - retnuhllort 1y ago
        Don't get what you said. Is this about X if so I don't get the ref.
BoorishBears 1y ago
Not buying a lot of them left over this. The reaction to their AI announcement doesn't feel organic at all with oceans and oceans of content creators flooding feeds with samesy half-deprecating bashes of them using AI. I think for every person who genuinely was put off, even more either didn't care, or were using ChatGPT for language learning and would try it to see what they mean by an AI-first approach. - And for anyone who thinks they'd never take that kind of bad publicity on purpose: this is the brand that "killed" their beloved mascot a few months ago and similarly managed to saturate multiple channels with creators bashing them for that. This is straight out of the "stop hiring humans" playbook.