PITTSBURGH — Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said that the company has “backtracked” on requiring employees to use AI and no longer evaluates it during performance reviews.
In April of last year, von Ahn announced in a memo that the company would focus on becoming “AI-first,” and would evaluate employees’ AI usage during performance reviews. Backlash online was swift, with von Ahn later admitting during an earnings call that it impacted user growth. Now, nearly a year later, von Ahn said on the Silicon Valley Girl podcast that the East Liberty-headquartered company had “backtracked” because he did not want to force employees to use AI for the sake of just using AI.
“For a while, it was part of performance reviews, but we decided not to do that,” von Ahn said. “We backtracked and said ‘no, look, the most important thing in your performance is that you are doing whatever your job is as well as possible.’ A lot of times AI can help you with that, but if it can’t, I’m not going to force you to do that. So, I think we backtracked from that because it felt like, rather than being held accountable for the actual outcome we were trying to just push something that in some cases did not fit.”
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