Duolingo Plans to Replace Contract Workers with AI
Duolingo is planning to use more AI and less human work. In an email to all employees, co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn said the company will be “AI-first.” The email was also shared on Duolingo’s LinkedIn page.
According to von Ahn, being “AI-first” means the company will “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle.” He added that they will have to “rethink much of how we work” because “making minor tweaks to systems designed for humans won’t get us there.”
As part of the change, Duolingo will:
- Use AI more in hiring and performance reviews
- Only allow new hires if a team truly cannot automate the work
- Reduce the number of contractors doing tasks AI can do
von Ahn said, “Duolingo will remain a company that cares deeply about its employees.” He also explained, “this isn’t about replacing Duos with AI.” Instead, he said the goal is “about removing bottlenecks” so workers can “focus on creative work and real problems, not repetitive tasks.”
He also shared why AI is important for Duolingo’s future. “AI isn’t just a productivity boost,” von Ahn said. “It helps us get closer to our mission. To teach well, we need to create a massive amount of content, and doing that manually doesn’t scale. One of the best decisions we made recently was replacing a slow, manual content creation process with one powered by AI. Without AI, it would take us decades to scale our content to more learners. We owe it to our learners to get them this content ASAP.”
This announcement comes after Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke shared a similar message with his workers. Lütke said that before teams ask for more staff or money, they must show “why they cannot get what they want done using AI.”
You can check out the full statement below:
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