If you believe the hype, translators will all soon be out of work. Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of the language learning app Duolingo, doesn't think AI is quite there... yet. In this interview, Greg Rosalsky talks with Luis about AI and how it's reshaping translation jobs and the language learning industry. We also ask him about headlines earlier this year suggesting Duolingo laid off some of its workers and replaced them with AI.This is one of Greg's Behind The Newsletter conversations where he shares his interviews with policy makers, business leaders, and economists who appear in The Planet Money Newsletter.This episode was first released as a bonus episode for Planet Money+ listeners earlier this year. We're sharing it today for all listeners. To hear more episodes like this one and support NPR in the process, sign up for Planet Money+ at plus.npr.org. We'll have a fresh bonus episode out in two weeks!You can sign up for the The Planet Money Newsletter and check out past editions here:https://www.npr.org/planetmoneynewsletterLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Hi, this is Mary Childs. There's the saying about artificial intelligence that right now AI is the worst it will ever be. It screws up a lot now, but it is only going to get better. So how to even answer questions like will AI replace jobs or change jobs? We talked about this on the show last year and especially in the Planet Money newsletter, which our beloved Greg Wazowski writes.
Subscribe if you haven't already. It's very good. So today we are sharing something that Greg uncovered for the newsletter this summer. He figured out a clever way to investigate AI progress for jobs. Look at something AI is already good at. Translation. Greg interviewed an AI innovator who also is the head of the language learning app Duolingo.
We regularly publish Greg's newsletter chats as bonus episodes for our Planet Money Plus subscribers. So if that is you, you already got a chance to hear this. Bonus content is just one perk of signing up for Planet Money Plus. You also get every episode of Planet Money without sponsor messages. And you get exclusive Planet Money merch at the NPR shop.
So while you listen today, consider supporting us by signing up. Just go to plus.npr.org. Okay, here's Greg.
Recently, I've been trying to figure out how to measure if AI is overhyped right now, or maybe it's appropriately hyped. I don't know. And one of the people I talked to about this is an entrepreneur and AI innovator.
My name is Luis Fonan, and I am the CEO and co-founder of Duolingo.
Duolingo, it's the popular language learning app. Luis has a pretty fascinating background. He was born and raised in Guatemala, and he came to the United States for college to study mathematics and computer science. In his early 20s, Luis co-created Captcha.
You're probably familiar with it, when a website forces you to prove you're human and asks you to do things like identify stoplights or bicycles or whatever in a grid of photographs. I didn't know this until I spoke to him, but CAPTCHA is actually an acronym.
Completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart. It's a mouthful. It's basically a test to distinguish whether you're a human or a computer.
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