It seems like a combination of 1) extreme denial of the possibility of change anywhere ever (which is standard middle-class anxiety - your extremely specialize

It seems like a combination of 1) extreme denial of the possibility of change anywhere ever (which is standard middle-class anxiety - your extremely specialized skills have been devalued, and now you're poor), and 2) cynicism is safe because most things fail. Cynicism is even safer when a bunch of people are trying to sell you something, because most of them are going to be con-men. But I think the modern machine learning methods of the past few years are as important as the computer, and we're just starting the period between the computer and the transistor, during which time we're using vacuum tubes and giant iron rings to build them. When the AI-transistor comes along, it's going to be the engine of all human technological process for the next century. edit: if there's anything that AI is going to be really, really good at, very soon, it's going to be teaching people languages. I don't have a problem with Duolingo going to AI; it wasn't exactly great before. It's just a brand and cartoons, not a method. Being that it wasn't great before, though, I have no idea what qualifies Duolingo to come up with language-teaching AI. I don't think gamification skills transfer. If anything, they need to be furiously hiring extremely high level, extremely expensive AI people and second-language learning academics/linguists. Duolingo lost its purpose as an app when it figured out that creating a translation army was pointless, and it lost most of its usefulness when it froze, then deleted the forums. Now it's just a cloud of IP. They might as well start selling a soda pop.