Duolingo introduced plans this week to switch contractors with AI and change into an “AI-first” firm — a transfer that journalist Brian Service provider pointed to as an indication that the AI jobs disaster “is right here, now.”
In reality, Service provider spoke to a former Duolingo contractor who stated this isn’t even a brand new coverage. The corporate reduce round 10% of its contractor workforce on the finish of 2023, and Service provider stated there was one other spherical of cuts in October 2024. In each circumstances, contractors (first translators, then writers) had been changed with AI.
Service provider additionally famous reporting in The Atlantic round the unusually excessive unemployment price for current school graduates. One rationalization? Corporations is likely to be changing entry-level white collar jobs with AI, or their spending on AI would possibly merely be “crowding out” the spending for brand spanking new hires.
This disaster, Service provider wrote, is de facto “a sequence of administration choices being made by executives looking for to chop labor prices and consolidate management of their organizations,” and it’s manifesting as “attrition in inventive industries, the declining earnings of freelance artists, writers, and illustrators, and in firms’ inclination to easily rent fewer human staff.”
“The AI jobs disaster isn’t any type of SkyNet-esque robotic jobs apocalypse — it’s DOGE firing tens of hundreds of federal workers whereas waving the banner of ‘an AI-first technique,’” he added.
