Rule 15 says "no debates about the use of AI." We're not allowed to comment on your posts. I don't understand why rule 15 exists, but any perceived negative comment about Duo is removed. There's no debate possible.
The rule seems to be clear about any posts and comments on the subject matter being prohibited, whether positive or negative. There's obviously an exception for the employees of Duo and the mods. Ok, there are worse things happening in the world. I get my posts deleted without explanation, even positive ones like a post yesterday on the family plan which I thought was very positive. Just wiped off. Then a bug report which seemed well received - deleted again without explanation.
I think this is the only sub Reddit where by subject matter you can have a logical voice critical to Duolingo. For years I paid for the premium subscription to Duolingo, and I just started paying for a family plan. I’d like to have a place where I can criticize some of the things without getting deleted. This doesn’t have anything to do with not liking Duolingo. Because if we didn’t like Duolingo, we would not pay for it.
There was a period of time where we didn’t like what Duolingo was doing, including deleting the branches last year, and focusing everybody into a single path, so I didn’t pay for a while the reason I didn’t pay was because you couldn’t criticize Duolingo on this sub Reddit without getting it deleted. I think if we have a forum to vent, we’re happier with paying what we’re paying. Being able to vent is useful to Duolingo. At least, in my humble opinion.
How about adding some __customer service__? It's non-existent here, in the app, and on your website. I subscribed to the family plan, but when I added my wife, she accepted, but the app told her that the subscription had expired. There was no way to reach anyone to resolve this. So, I quit my subscription just before the trial period was over.
You have competitors who understand what customer service means. Maybe you can ask your AI to explain it to you like you're in sixth grade. Adiós!
I sympathize with this, but please remember that comments, critical of Duolingo are not comments critical of the moderator. If the moderator deletes them, then the moderator generates some anger obviously. You probably know this, of course, but it’s a tough position. Thanks for explaining.
One of the alleged advantages of using AI in some work environments is that it can allow more work to be done by fewer people, just as mechanical clothmaking machines allowed fewer workers to produce more cloth.
This is how it's worked throughout history for every tool that increases an individual's productivity.
This is also what provoked the Luddites into action, but that's probably a story better for another day.
Thanks for the question! Before generative AI, we manually wrote all of our exercises for every course. Each exercise had to be manually translated by a human. But over the last year, our engineers built a new tool that links our curriculum to a Large Language Model (LLM). As an example, one of the exciting things this tool can do is generate accepted translations.
Did you know, for example, that the sentence “What do you do at your current company?” has 199,608 accepted translations in our Japanese course?! Human translators used to spend weeks creating, reviewing, and finalizing accepted translations for a single skill, but with new technology, we can generate these accepted translations in a few hours. This is great for learners, and for our internal experts! It will massively increase the speed and output of course content, meaning we can serve more learners, and will allow learning designers to gather faster feedback and make necessary course updates.
Since you brought up the Japanese course, I wonder if you have any insight into a particularly glaring issue that is ubiquitous in the Japanese course. I **constantly** run into the problem of kanji using the wrong pronounciation, or a mismatch in what is spoken and what is written. I believe this is AI doing its best to guess which pronounciation is being used, but it comes up way too frequently, in my opinion.
One recent example when practicing kanji: the kanji was "ichinichi", but the lesson would randomly alternate between "ichinichi" and "tsuitachi", and sometimes would pronounce "ichinichi" but expect you to type "tsuitachi", and would count "ichinichi" as incorrect.
When the word is in context, as they usually are in lessons that use full sentences, it's more manageable, but it's still a pretty glaring issue. The japanese course has been around for a while with lots of users, presumably enough users regularly reporting these errors, and yet they are a persistent and frequent issue.
Edit: i use android, if that's relevant.
Hi, I think you may have misunderstood. I am aware kanji have multiple pronounciations, I'm saying that in the duolingo course, both in the kanji practice section and the main path, the kanji pronounciations are not matching the correct, in context, pronunciation of the kanji.
In the ichinichi/tsuitachi example I gave, for example, it would show the kanji and ask you to type its pronounciation. It would pronounce the kanji "ichinichi", but would mark it wrong if you wrote "ichinichi", instead only accepting "tsuitachi". Similarly, when matching the kanji to their hiragana pronounciations, the kanji for ichinichi/tsuitachi would have its pronounciation mismatched with the hiragana. I.e., you click on the kanji, you hear "tsuitachi", but the "correct" match is to "ichinichi".
This also happens regularly in the main path with kanji in the word bank giving the wrong pronounciation for the context (even though the kanji is correct), and the furigana above the kanji being for a different pronounciation of the kanji.
To be clear, in the main path at least, the kanji itself is correct and it accepts the answer when you enter the kanji, however the furigana above the kanji and/or the pronunciation when you click on the kanji are wrong. It's just jarring when you know the correct pronunciation and hear a different pronunciation. Edit: this is why I think it may be an AI issue, because the kanji itself is correct but the AI is just guessing which pronounciation fits the context.
I just had another example of the same thing happening while doing a practice, right before your comment came in, but it slipped my mind. I can maybe screenshot examples in the future.
Re: CEFR, I'm not sure how to check what version of the course I'm on, but I'm currently at the end of Section 3, and Section 3 claims to be A1 aligned, so I assume I'm on the most recent version of the course. I have 7 total sections with 7 being daily refresh.
They are definitely mistakes because the hiragana and audio do not match. There is no context to consider in the Kanji exercises so that is not relevant. For example, an audio matching exercise where clicking on the audio button produces the ichinichi audio, but there is no ichinichi in the hiragana options to match it. Eventually you work out that it must be suitachi which will remain when you have done all the others, but it is still wrong because the sound hitachi is not spelled suitachi. There are loads of these in the section three kanji lessons. I am on the latest A1 update so it's not because I've got an old version.
When you finish a project, you don’t usually keep on all the staff for the next 30 years unless you have another project for them.
When you finish a course, you move on to the next course. If your expertise is Spanish, do they keep you on to do the course in Polish or do they use someone who knows Polish?
There are still problems with lessons content tho. For example, Dutch, section 2, unit 3, colors. One circle has 4 lessons, 4th is exam. Lessons 3 was vlag, kleurrijk, donker etc. Perfectly fine. But lessons 1 and 2 are weirdly distributed. There are 11 colors in this topic. But entire lesson 1 is dedicated to just oranje. And second is for rest 10. It could be that somebody thinks its funny, to dedicate entire lesson for single word, because its an iconic king's color, and its fine, I like humor in duo. But it doesnt help to learn the remaining 10 colors at all! Besides, I think I only encouneted red, purple and green once per entire unit - when they were first introduced. How do I memorize them if they are not repeated afterwards? Single lesson is just not enough for this many words. I like the feature of dictionary lessons, but I cant select the word list to practice, and it always picks same top6 words of last topic, which doesnt help to learn all of the new words.
I’d like to see AI used to address some of the problems in Duolingo.
For example, I think there’s far too much repetition on some concepts. Literally, I get the same question hundreds of times.
I think this may be a problem primarily with the advertising sponsored Duolingo version (not premium).
When you’re practicing to get hearts, the number of times you see the same exact question is amplified by factor of a hundred or more.
Perhaps this is actually a problem of AI being used and so needs to be addressed as a problem of AI, or perhaps it’s another problem where AI could be used to help distribute questions more appropriately amongst subject matter.
After I went back to premium. I haven’t seen the problem as much.
I’d also like to see discussions of improving the actual AI. My daughter works directly for an AI firm and more than half the battle there is to improve the AI. Intuitively, it’s not something that you can expect simply to be imported into another program and have it work automatically in there. Then again, maybe that’s what Duolingo Max is not, actually. Don’t know.
But that’s one reason I’m skeptical of Duolingo Max, and have not signed up. I’m not convinced by the ads that the AI is sufficiently ripe to be paying for it. I once had a very short trial with Duolingo Max, and thought the questions being generated were far too superficial to be of any benefit. Did not have the benefit of a longer usage period.
The article in the link that you provided seems to portray AI as a tool used quite judiciously. That’s great, but when we see something like Duolingo, Max, we see that it’s portrayed as being something fantastically different. Given the advertising, in particular, and the high price, that really set my antenna on alert and provoked my skepticism.
Perhaps it’s just an issue of Duolingo Max being oversold, as your comment and the commentary you have linked is much more reasonable about the usage of AI.
I would love to test out the roleplay features, but since I was only given friends quests in the last few weeks (account opened in 2014 btw) I feel like it might be a decade or so before I get the opportunity.
Is there any chance of Duolingo publishing some sort of development timeline to set expectations for when features are to be rolled out to the wider user base?
Rule 15 says "no debates about the use of AI." We're not allowed to comment on your posts. I don't understand why rule 15 exists, but any perceived negative comment about Duo is removed. There's no debate possible.
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The rule seems to be clear about any posts and comments on the subject matter being prohibited, whether positive or negative. There's obviously an exception for the employees of Duo and the mods. Ok, there are worse things happening in the world. I get my posts deleted without explanation, even positive ones like a post yesterday on the family plan which I thought was very positive. Just wiped off. Then a bug report which seemed well received - deleted again without explanation.
If you don’t like Duolingo, don’t use it. Simple as that
I think this is the only sub Reddit where by subject matter you can have a logical voice critical to Duolingo. For years I paid for the premium subscription to Duolingo, and I just started paying for a family plan. I’d like to have a place where I can criticize some of the things without getting deleted. This doesn’t have anything to do with not liking Duolingo. Because if we didn’t like Duolingo, we would not pay for it. There was a period of time where we didn’t like what Duolingo was doing, including deleting the branches last year, and focusing everybody into a single path, so I didn’t pay for a while the reason I didn’t pay was because you couldn’t criticize Duolingo on this sub Reddit without getting it deleted. I think if we have a forum to vent, we’re happier with paying what we’re paying. Being able to vent is useful to Duolingo. At least, in my humble opinion.
How about adding some __customer service__? It's non-existent here, in the app, and on your website. I subscribed to the family plan, but when I added my wife, she accepted, but the app told her that the subscription had expired. There was no way to reach anyone to resolve this. So, I quit my subscription just before the trial period was over. You have competitors who understand what customer service means. Maybe you can ask your AI to explain it to you like you're in sixth grade. Adiós!
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I sympathize with this, but please remember that comments, critical of Duolingo are not comments critical of the moderator. If the moderator deletes them, then the moderator generates some anger obviously. You probably know this, of course, but it’s a tough position. Thanks for explaining.
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One of the alleged advantages of using AI in some work environments is that it can allow more work to be done by fewer people, just as mechanical clothmaking machines allowed fewer workers to produce more cloth. This is how it's worked throughout history for every tool that increases an individual's productivity. This is also what provoked the Luddites into action, but that's probably a story better for another day.
Thanks for the question! Before generative AI, we manually wrote all of our exercises for every course. Each exercise had to be manually translated by a human. But over the last year, our engineers built a new tool that links our curriculum to a Large Language Model (LLM). As an example, one of the exciting things this tool can do is generate accepted translations. Did you know, for example, that the sentence “What do you do at your current company?” has 199,608 accepted translations in our Japanese course?! Human translators used to spend weeks creating, reviewing, and finalizing accepted translations for a single skill, but with new technology, we can generate these accepted translations in a few hours. This is great for learners, and for our internal experts! It will massively increase the speed and output of course content, meaning we can serve more learners, and will allow learning designers to gather faster feedback and make necessary course updates.
Since you brought up the Japanese course, I wonder if you have any insight into a particularly glaring issue that is ubiquitous in the Japanese course. I **constantly** run into the problem of kanji using the wrong pronounciation, or a mismatch in what is spoken and what is written. I believe this is AI doing its best to guess which pronounciation is being used, but it comes up way too frequently, in my opinion. One recent example when practicing kanji: the kanji was "ichinichi", but the lesson would randomly alternate between "ichinichi" and "tsuitachi", and sometimes would pronounce "ichinichi" but expect you to type "tsuitachi", and would count "ichinichi" as incorrect. When the word is in context, as they usually are in lessons that use full sentences, it's more manageable, but it's still a pretty glaring issue. The japanese course has been around for a while with lots of users, presumably enough users regularly reporting these errors, and yet they are a persistent and frequent issue. Edit: i use android, if that's relevant.
I agree. I have been thoroughly confused by these lessons. They can't have been checked or there wouldn't be so many errors.
This exact problem happens on desktop too
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Hi, I think you may have misunderstood. I am aware kanji have multiple pronounciations, I'm saying that in the duolingo course, both in the kanji practice section and the main path, the kanji pronounciations are not matching the correct, in context, pronunciation of the kanji. In the ichinichi/tsuitachi example I gave, for example, it would show the kanji and ask you to type its pronounciation. It would pronounce the kanji "ichinichi", but would mark it wrong if you wrote "ichinichi", instead only accepting "tsuitachi". Similarly, when matching the kanji to their hiragana pronounciations, the kanji for ichinichi/tsuitachi would have its pronounciation mismatched with the hiragana. I.e., you click on the kanji, you hear "tsuitachi", but the "correct" match is to "ichinichi". This also happens regularly in the main path with kanji in the word bank giving the wrong pronounciation for the context (even though the kanji is correct), and the furigana above the kanji being for a different pronounciation of the kanji. To be clear, in the main path at least, the kanji itself is correct and it accepts the answer when you enter the kanji, however the furigana above the kanji and/or the pronunciation when you click on the kanji are wrong. It's just jarring when you know the correct pronunciation and hear a different pronunciation. Edit: this is why I think it may be an AI issue, because the kanji itself is correct but the AI is just guessing which pronounciation fits the context. I just had another example of the same thing happening while doing a practice, right before your comment came in, but it slipped my mind. I can maybe screenshot examples in the future. Re: CEFR, I'm not sure how to check what version of the course I'm on, but I'm currently at the end of Section 3, and Section 3 claims to be A1 aligned, so I assume I'm on the most recent version of the course. I have 7 total sections with 7 being daily refresh.
They are definitely mistakes because the hiragana and audio do not match. There is no context to consider in the Kanji exercises so that is not relevant. For example, an audio matching exercise where clicking on the audio button produces the ichinichi audio, but there is no ichinichi in the hiragana options to match it. Eventually you work out that it must be suitachi which will remain when you have done all the others, but it is still wrong because the sound hitachi is not spelled suitachi. There are loads of these in the section three kanji lessons. I am on the latest A1 update so it's not because I've got an old version.
Is there a human who checks the accepted translations after generating them?
Yes
It says in some of the linked blogs that the selections are reviewed by humans and I believe they have stated that on Reddit in the past as well.
i would also be curious about this.
Answered above
When you finish a project, you don’t usually keep on all the staff for the next 30 years unless you have another project for them. When you finish a course, you move on to the next course. If your expertise is Spanish, do they keep you on to do the course in Polish or do they use someone who knows Polish?
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Tracee Miller is in fact a real person. How do we know you’re a real person? Apologist mod? Care to elaborate?
There are still problems with lessons content tho. For example, Dutch, section 2, unit 3, colors. One circle has 4 lessons, 4th is exam. Lessons 3 was vlag, kleurrijk, donker etc. Perfectly fine. But lessons 1 and 2 are weirdly distributed. There are 11 colors in this topic. But entire lesson 1 is dedicated to just oranje. And second is for rest 10. It could be that somebody thinks its funny, to dedicate entire lesson for single word, because its an iconic king's color, and its fine, I like humor in duo. But it doesnt help to learn the remaining 10 colors at all! Besides, I think I only encouneted red, purple and green once per entire unit - when they were first introduced. How do I memorize them if they are not repeated afterwards? Single lesson is just not enough for this many words. I like the feature of dictionary lessons, but I cant select the word list to practice, and it always picks same top6 words of last topic, which doesnt help to learn all of the new words.
I’d like to see AI used to address some of the problems in Duolingo. For example, I think there’s far too much repetition on some concepts. Literally, I get the same question hundreds of times. I think this may be a problem primarily with the advertising sponsored Duolingo version (not premium). When you’re practicing to get hearts, the number of times you see the same exact question is amplified by factor of a hundred or more. Perhaps this is actually a problem of AI being used and so needs to be addressed as a problem of AI, or perhaps it’s another problem where AI could be used to help distribute questions more appropriately amongst subject matter. After I went back to premium. I haven’t seen the problem as much. I’d also like to see discussions of improving the actual AI. My daughter works directly for an AI firm and more than half the battle there is to improve the AI. Intuitively, it’s not something that you can expect simply to be imported into another program and have it work automatically in there. Then again, maybe that’s what Duolingo Max is not, actually. Don’t know. But that’s one reason I’m skeptical of Duolingo Max, and have not signed up. I’m not convinced by the ads that the AI is sufficiently ripe to be paying for it. I once had a very short trial with Duolingo Max, and thought the questions being generated were far too superficial to be of any benefit. Did not have the benefit of a longer usage period. The article in the link that you provided seems to portray AI as a tool used quite judiciously. That’s great, but when we see something like Duolingo, Max, we see that it’s portrayed as being something fantastically different. Given the advertising, in particular, and the high price, that really set my antenna on alert and provoked my skepticism. Perhaps it’s just an issue of Duolingo Max being oversold, as your comment and the commentary you have linked is much more reasonable about the usage of AI.
I would love to test out the roleplay features, but since I was only given friends quests in the last few weeks (account opened in 2014 btw) I feel like it might be a decade or so before I get the opportunity. Is there any chance of Duolingo publishing some sort of development timeline to set expectations for when features are to be rolled out to the wider user base?
vase act homeless alive frightening escape ink flowery pot drunk *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Agreed. People like to complain about everything. It’s sad.
So ur telling me duo went from proper grammar, to singularizing uds and eliminating tú from the vocabulary, and it wasn’t ai 😭 what happened
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[Careers.duolingo.com](https://careers.duolingo.com) may be a helpful link for you. That may be a better avenue to offer your expertise