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Duolingo Fires Translators in Favor of AI (futurism.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Duolingo is very much on the Enshittification path, seems like they fired a number of translators and have the rest just proofreading AI.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

My career was as a copyeditor, and we were the canaries in the coal mine when it came to learning about "good enough." First came the buyouts of anyone with any longevity, then the annual layoffs started (and continued for nearly 10 years) until editing was completely excised from the role and anyone remaining was just a pair of hands moving rectangles for several papers on any given night. Cancellations were less than we'd cost.

Thing is, there was a fairly long exit ramp for those of us smart enough to see the endgame (I was not among them, believing there'd always be sufficient demand for rigorously vetted and edited news to keep papers afloat).

This time around, we're not even 14 months out from the public release of ChatGPT, and having used just the free model, its abilities do raise the question "why do we have someone doing this?" for a number of fields I've worked in. Layoffs are happening without warning caused by something not even on most people's radars mid-2022, and there's no way it slows down from here.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Couldn't agree more, you make a point with the timeline. It's changing too fast. And it's not only ChatGPT but also image generation tools such as Midjourney. There are AI for 3D models too now, which I believe will be of industry standard quality in a year or two.

AI is a phenomenon of a similar weight as the Industrial Revolution, but its much faster development means a lot of people can't keep up or change careers