{"id":74854,"date":"2025-05-04T21:46:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T21:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/74854\/"},"modified":"2025-05-04T21:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T21:46:07","slug":"is-duolingo-the-face-of-an-ai-jobs-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/74854\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Duolingo the face of an AI jobs crisis?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Duolingo announced plans this week to replace contractors with AI and <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/04\/30\/duolingo-launches-148-courses-created-with-ai-after-sharing-plans-to-replace-contractors-with-ai\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">become an \u201cAI-first\u201d company<\/a> \u2014 a move that <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloodinthemachine.com\/p\/the-ai-jobs-crisis-is-here-now\" target=\"_blank\">journalist Brian Merchant pointed to<\/a> as a sign that the AI jobs crisis \u201cis here, now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, Merchant spoke to a former Duolingo contractor who said this isn\u2019t even a new policy. The company <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/01\/09\/duolingo-cut-10-of-its-contractor-workforce-as-the-company-embraces-ai\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cut around 10% of its contractor workforce<\/a> at the end of 2023, and Merchant said there was another round of cuts in October 2024. In both cases, contractors (first translators, then writers) were replaced with AI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Merchant also noted reporting in The Atlantic around <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/economy\/archive\/2025\/04\/job-market-youth\/682641\/\" target=\"_blank\">the unusually high unemployment rate for recent college graduates<\/a>. One explanation? Companies might be replacing entry-level white collar jobs with AI, or their spending on AI might simply be \u201ccrowding out\u201d the spending for new hires.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This crisis, Merchant wrote, is really \u201ca series of management decisions being made by executives seeking to cut labor costs and consolidate control in their organizations,\u201d and it\u2019s manifesting as \u201cattrition in creative industries, the declining income of freelance artists, writers, and illustrators, and in corporations\u2019 inclination to simply hire fewer human workers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe AI jobs crisis is not any sort of SkyNet-esque robot jobs apocalypse \u2014 it\u2019s <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloodinthemachine.com\/p\/the-federal-tech-workers-facing-down\" target=\"_blank\">DOGE firing tens of thousands of federal employees<\/a> while waving the banner of <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloodinthemachine.com\/p\/the-ai-jobs-crisis-is-here-now\" target=\"_blank\">\u2018an AI-first strategy,\u2019<\/a>\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Duolingo announced plans this week to replace contractors with AI and become an \u201cAI-first\u201d company \u2014 a move&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,37004,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-74854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-duolingo","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114451761280805025","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}