Is everyone’s favorite social media savvy green bird at risk of redundancy? Luis von Ahn, CEO of popular language learning app Duolingo, announced a shift to an AI-first business model by email which has since been made public by the company, detailing plans to “[replace] a slow, manual content creation process with one powered by AI.”

Pack it up, freelancers. As part of this change, Duolingo will be eschewing freelancers and contract workers for positions in which AI tools and automations prove more efficient. Von Ahn’s email noted that amongst existing criteria and performance metrics, use of AI will be greatly taken into account when hiring new talent, and evaluating existing employees’ performance. “All of this said, Duolingo will remain a company that cares deeply about its employees,” von Ahn ended his email — but the statement was not met with enthusiasm by the LinkedIn community.

Is it time to let the subscription go? For many-a-commentor on the original LinkedIn post, the shift all but confirmed a rising concern held by mns of employees. Several professionals in the tech industry were quick to call out the popular language learning app in the post’s comments section, citing “poor leadership,” “signs of a clearly declining Duolingo organization,” and “a rather strange move worthy of a Black Mirror episode by a company whose primary product is to facilitate human communication.” But Duolingo isn’t the only company shifting their hiring model.

If you jump, I jump. Earlier this April, Canadian e-commerce company Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke sent out a memo detailing the company’s new approach to hiring talent, mentioning that teams will be required to prove inability to facilitate certain processes through AI before requesting additional human resources, as reported by CNBC. The memo sent out by Lütke also called attention to the rise of a “fundamental expectation” across Shopify teams to embrace AI in daily tasks — but won’t quality take a hit?

Low quality is a price Duolingo CEO von Ahn is willing to pay. Time is money, and AI offers more for less… but that is not always a good thing. “We’d rather move with urgency and take occasional small hits on quality than move slowly and miss the moment,” von Ahn wrote in his email. Is that a sustainable framework? It seems only time will tell.

Let’s look at the bigger picture. In a recently published report by Microsoft, the tech leader believes that AI agents — software systems designed to mimic human behaviour, albeit more “efficiently” — are likely to replace human talent working across services, namely customer service, marketing, communications, and product development. This leaves mns of workers in a precarious position: either embrace AI or risk redundancy, says TheStreet.

Resist or embrace? To justify this shift, Duolingo compared the rise of AI agents in the workforce to the rise of mobile-first services in the early 2010s. Noting their focus on creating content primarily for mobile at a time when most companies prioritised desktop websites — a shift that then earned them the 2013 iPhone App of the Year Award. If track record is anything to go by, it seems Duolingo might be taking a step in the right direction for their company, though many may find themselves hesitant to accept it on a humanitarian level.

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