A (2:13)

I agree. I think AI has a bit of an inspiration problem. Now, you were 28 when you received the MacArthur genius grant. What did you do with the money?

B (2:22)

I put it in the bank, basically. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I put it in the bank, basically. I. Yeah, I mean, I was very, very happy to have received that and very proud. But yeah, I basically put it in the bank. Eventually. That probably ended up being spent setting things up for Duolingo.

A (2:38)

Fair, good use of money. What language has the most ridiculous grammar rules?

B (2:43)

Well, I don't know that for a fact, but I'll tell you some that are pretty ridiculous. Finnish and Hungarian are pretty hard to learn and have strange rules. It's generally languages that are far from your native language. Just feel.

A (2:57)

Feel ridiculous.

B (2:58)

Feel ridiculous. Feel weird.

A (3:00)

Fair enough. My sister is learning Mandarin right now, and I think she would. She would testify to that.

B (3:04)

That is a hard language to learn.

A (3:06)

She's having a hard time. She's using Duolingo, you know, one day at a time.

B (3:08)

Yep.

A (3:09)

Now you invented Captcha.

B (3:11)

Mm.

A (3:12)

Would you like to apologize to me and our audience now, or do you want to find an opportunity to do it later in the podcast?

B (3:17)

Look, I am sorry, by the way, was. It wasn't just me. It was a team effort with my PhD advisor, Manuel Blum. But, yeah, I apologize.

A (3:26)

Thank you.

B (3:27)

I'm sorry.

A (3:27)

I appreciate that. So does the entire Internet now. Let's get into it. So I want to sort of set the stage a little bit, because when you started Duolingo, when you started the company, what, 15 years ago?

B (3:40)

Yeah, 2011. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A (3:42)

So the idea at the time was to create this crowdsource translation tool. Fast forward to 2026. Obviously, the company has transformed a great deal since then, but, you know, I can now translate English into any language on my AirPods. Right. And. And along with that, and along with sort of gen AI and all of the products that have come with that technology, there is, I think, this. This simmering question. It's a question we talk about at Wired sometimes, about what does this mean for all kinds of learning, Right? Not just language, but the way we interact with even the idea of learning. Do people even want to learn anymore, period? Or do they. Do they feel that motivation within that, like, broader technological and social context? How do you describe Duolingo today? So, I guess, big picture, what has changed? I mean, a lot has changed from 2011 to now. But. But how do you think about all of those questions when you're talking about your company?

B (4:34)

Yeah, I mean, generally, you know, Duolingo is a platform to learn things. I mean, primarily, we teach languages. We don't just teach languages. We also teach math and music and chess. But it's a platform to teach things. And also, primarily, people use our mobile apps to learn. I think the desire to learn has not gone down. I don't see it go down. I think in general, humans still need to learn things. It just makes life better. If you know things, it's fuller. In the case of translation. You know, language translation, computer language translation has been almost perfect between the major languages for like a decade now. I mean, Google Translate in 2015 between English and Spanish, for example, was essentially perfect. Yeah, but we have not seen the desire to learn a language go down at all.

A (5:30)

That's interesting.

B (5:30)

In fact, we've seen it increase.

A (5:31)

Yeah.

B (5:32)

And the reason for that, I think there's two reasons. The biggest one, at least for our users, is that most of the people that are learning a language that is not English are doing so as a hobby. You know, hobbies. Whether a computer can do something or not doesn't matter for a hobby. A good example is chess. I mean, computers have been better at chess than humans since a computer beat the world chess champion.

A (5:53)

Right.

B (5:54)

People really want to learn chess. That's just so. It kind of doesn't matter. That's one big reason. The other reason is half of our users are learning English. They actually want to learn English. This is not a hobby. I mean, maybe for some of them it's a hobby, but generally just knowledge of English makes your life better in all kinds of ways. I mean, usually you can make more money and it's pretty direct. I mean, for example, if you live in a non English speaking country and you're a waiter and you learn English, you can become a waiter at a hotel that pays better. So you can just make more money by knowing English. So we just have not seen the desire to learn a language go down at all.

A (6:28)

That's, I mean, frankly a relief. And I do think it's important to talk about your background, which is really interesting because it helps the origin story of Duolingo make a lot of sense. Right. So you were born in Guatemala, your parents were physicians, you grew up middle class, your mom, your grandma. Can you talk about your home life growing up? Is there a memory that stands out in your mind?

B (6:49)

Yeah, I mean, I grew up in Guatemala.

A (6:51)

Yeah.

B (6:52)

It's funny, you can paint that picture in multiple ways. You can paint it in a really bleak manner. I mean, it is true that I grew up. I was born and I grew up while Guatemala was having a civil war. So that sounds terrible, but it wasn't that bad for me. I mean, because I lived in Guatemala City, which was a little isolated from the civil war. And also I was, you know, in a middle class neighborhood. So things were safe, ish. You know, at home it was just me and my mom and also living with my grandma. So the three of us, I mean, probably, you know, there's a lot of Memories about that. But one very transformative one was my mom came home one day with a computer. I had never used a computer. I was seven years old. What I really wanted was a Nintendo and she brought me.

A (7:34)

What a bummer.

B (7:34)

Yes. I was actually pretty upset. She brought me a Commodore 64.

A (7:38)

Oh, wow.

B (7:39)

I don't know why she did that, honestly, because my mom, to this day, she's, you know, she's still with us to this day. She has never used a computer in her entire life. But she, I don't know, she decided

A (7:48)

that she's never used a computer in her entire life and has no interest in.

B (7:52)

No. And she also doesn't have a smartphone. She has a flip phone.

A (7:55)

Wow.

B (7:56)

She basically, she is not on the Internet.

A (7:58)

I respect this, if I'm being honest.

B (8:00)

This is just not on the Internet.

A (8:02)

Good for her.

B (8:02)

But she got me a computer and that, I mean, that changed my life. I mean, I had to learn how to use it. This was seven years old. So this was in, you know, kind of mid to late 80s. Computers were not easy to use and I had to learn how to use it. And it took me, it was very frustrating about a year until I could do anything of note with this computer. But I kind of stuck to it. And that was, that changed my life.

A (8:26)

And you went to this, this fantastic school, right, The American School of Guatemala, which I understand is, is very prestigious. You've talked before about how it gave you a window into another world or sort of filled out your worldview. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

B (8:39)

Yeah, I was very fortunate that my mother, my mother was a physician. But, you know, another piece of context. In Guatemala, doctors are not very wealthy like they are here. I mean, my, my mother was a physician that worked for the state of Guatemala. So again, you know, straight middle class. But she spent all of her extra income that was not for, you know, food on my education. So I went to this, you know, it's basically the school where the, all the kids of the rich people go to or like the kids of ambassadors and everything.

A (9:09)

Okay.

B (9:10)

So I, even though I was not rich, I received the education of a rich person. And that made me see things differently. I mean, for example, everybody else in my neighborhood was not going to that school. People in my neighborhood were going to kind of, you know, either public school or a middle class school. I could see the difference in what I was learning. I mean, I basically got a much better education than everybody else. And then I could see what that did in terms of opportunities that it opened up for me. I mean, in my case, I was able to come to the United States for college, et cetera. So this really changed my view in terms of what education is. A lot of people talk about education, and people are talking about education. They're like, oh, it's the thing that can bring social classes together. I always saw it as the opposite because of that. I mean, generally wealthy people can get themselves much better educations. This also happens to be true in the United States, of course.

A (9:56)

Absolutely.

B (9:56)

You know, we're sitting here in New York. People with money in New York can get really good education.

A (10:01)

They're spending $60,000 a year on that

B (10:03)

really good education, and they're very good, and it's probably worth it. And then people who don't have very much money, you know, especially in poor countries, sometimes they barely just learn how to read and write. That's it. That's what they got. And then because of that, they're never able to make money, et cetera. So this is really the reason I wanted to start Duolingo was can we do something that gives education to everyone? You know, equal access as much as possible to everyone in the world? And that's what we've been doing. And I'm very proud that that part has come true. I mean, today, Duolingo, you know, we have more than 100 million active users, and it really is the entire spectrum. I mean, from Syrian refugees all across Europe learning the language of the country they had moved to very wealthy, famous people. Like, I mean, there's a story yesterday that I saw this. George Clooney uses Duolingo.

A (10:52)

I was doing research for this podcast, and I saw that headline and was like, oh, I gotta read this now.

B (10:56)

I mean, it's. But it's. You know, it's not just him. It's just a lot of famous, wealthy people, Bill Gates, etc. And what's amazing is that usually, you know, billionaires or very wealthy people, et cetera, have access to much better stuff than certainly Syrian refugees. But in this case, it's basically the same system is being. Is being used by. By. By everybody. And, you know, kind of more money cannot buy you a better system. And that's exactly what we wanted to do.

A (11:21)

I'm curious, you know, you're running a public company, and. And there are obviously a lot of expectations financially that come with that. How do you allow for the George Clooney to have essentially the same experience as the Syrian refugee who really needs to learn English?

B (11:39)

I mean, ultimately, we're a Very mission driven company. We really care about this mission of developing the best education in the world and making it universally available. We really care about that. But the thing about it is that if you look at it in the long term, I'm pretty certain that that mission can also make a very big business. I mean, ultimately, if you can get to, I mean, at the moment, again, we have, I don't know the exact number, 135 million active users or something. If you can get to already 100 million, but if you get to 500 million a billion active users, you will have a large business. I mean, not everybody's going to pay at the moment. For example, 10% of our active users are paying and the other 90% don't pay.

A (12:19)

Okay, so that's the George Clooneys are paying and maybe some others are not.

B (12:22)

That's right. And you know, that is still a large business. So I'm perfectly fine with this. And by the way, our free users, the ones that don't pay may not pay, but they'll tell their friends and some of their friends will pay. So, you know, we love our free users.

A (12:40)

I'm not going to dig in on Captcha with you, but just as we sort of revisit your history and you're welcome and your trajectory. So you ultimately created Recaptcha and then you were able to sell to Google. Right. And my understanding is that's an amount of money that meant you could have just retired at a very young age. Right. You could have built a beautiful house wherever you wanted and bought a million sports cars and you know, done what people do when they make that kind of money at that age. You didn't. Why,

B (13:13)

yes. So in 2009 I sold this company, Recaptcha to Google. You know, I thought about it, about just retiring.

A (13:22)

When you thought about it, what did that look like for you? What's your utopian retirement vision?

B (13:28)

A house on a beach. But you know what's funny? I hate sand. So I don't know why that is my utopian vision.

A (13:34)

So that did it. You immediately got back to work.

B (13:36)

It's just not particularly a good utopian vision. But that is, when I think about it, I'm like, oh yeah, there's palm trees and there's. But I hate sand. But that was not the reason. The reason was I kind of, I just thought it would be really boring. For one reason or another, I just need to always be doing something. So I thought it would be really boring. So I pretty quickly started working on Other stuff.

A (13:59)

And that was in 2009. So it didn't take you that long to go from there to founding this company?

B (14:05)

No. About a year and a half from then. Yeah.

A (14:07)

Now, my understanding is that Bill Gates once spent 45 minutes trying to convince you to work with Microsoft and get a job there. You said you wanted to, quote, do your own thing, which is a bold thing to say to Bill Gates. Do you think he would be a terrible employee? I mean, what is it I think about you or when you think about yourself, that means that you were not someone maybe destined to work at a enormous sort of big tech company and sort of be a. Be a cog in that machine, as important as those cogs often are.

B (14:36)

I mean, I don't know if I would be a terrible employee. I just. There was something I really wanted to. A number of things I really wanted to do. To be fair, I think Microsoft in particular had this place where I was going to go get a job as Microsoft Research, which is an amazing place. But I just. I just really wanted to do my own thing. I don't know what it was. That's what it was. I don't know if I would have been that terrible of an employee because I'm a rule follower. So I think I would have just followed the rules. But I feel like I'm a lot happier doing what I want to do. And at this point, it has a lot to do with education. I really want to give out education to a lot of people at this point. As I get older, I start thinking about things like, well, what's gonna be on my tombstone?

A (15:22)

You're thinking about that already?

B (15:24)

I am. I mean, not that I'm gonna die tomorrow, but, you know, I'm like, you know, this is like, what, what if I'm ever remembered for something, what will it be? And I would like it to be something related to education.

A (15:37)

Thinking about legacy already?

C (15:48)

As a listener of Uncanny Valley, we know you want to stay on top of today's biggest stories in tech. And if you're curious about how tech and innovation are changing the healthcare landscape, check out Mayo Clinic's chart topping podcast, Tomorrow's Cure. Back for a brand new season, host and award winning journalist Kathy Werzer dives into the breakthroughs, challenges and human stories shaping the future of medicine. From advances in AI and cancer research to the rise of chronic disease and autoimmune disorders. Not sure where to start. We Recommend the season four premiere where dermatologist Dr. Saranya Wiles and biomedical engineer Dr. Adam Feinberg explore how 3D bioprinting is revolutionizing medical research and accelerating breakthroughs in healthcare. Whether you're a healthcare professional, patient, or simply curious about what's ahead, tomorrow's Cure invites you to imagine what healthcare could look like and shows you the future is already here. Find tomorrow's cure on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs? For getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology and what do they think? I'm Rana El Kaliubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in.

A (17:30)

Can you talk a little bit about actually building and scaling this company? Right. As a, you know, first time CEO, going from zero to however many employees you have now, what were the ins and outs of that? What was the good and bad? What were, what was the hardest part of, of building Duolingo into what it is today?

B (17:49)

The job of a CEO has changed significantly from the beginning. I mean, when you only have two or three employees, it's a very different job than when you have 100 employees than whatever we have now, which is close to a thousand employees. The job has changed quite a bit. So I think one of the hard parts has been continually growing with the company because things stop working. And what used to, for example, I claim, and this may, not everybody may agree with this, but I claim from 0 to 20 people, the best thing a CEO can do is micromanage. This is what I think a CEO should just micromanage.

A (18:23)

Just be in the weeds with all 19 of them.

B (18:26)

Yes. And if it worked for 1,000, I would love to do it. It just stops working after a certain number.

A (18:31)

That's terrible.

B (18:32)

I know, I'm sorry. It just stops working at some point. And so the things that used to, they stop working at some point. You kind of have to figure out why they stop working and then you have to evolve with it. The other thing that has been hard for me, for me in particular, I am by nature conflict avoidant. That is not always compatible with being a good CEO.

A (18:55)

No, I can't imagine it is.

B (18:57)

No. So, for example, this happened early on. I've gotten much better at that. But the first person that I had to let go from Duolingo, I had to do so three times because the first two times they did not realize that they were being fired because I sugarcoated it so much that they came back the next day.

A (19:14)

No.

B (19:14)

Yes, this happened.

A (19:15)

No, I know, but what happened the

B (19:18)

second time, I can't even explain this

A (19:21)

because then there was a third time.

B (19:22)

Yes, I know that. I also sugarcoated it the second time and I thought I was being more firm, but I wasn't. The third time, I think I was even a little mean. I was like, you're being fired. Do you realize that? So, yeah, I got a lot better at that. I'm much better at. I've learned a few things, particularly if there's something that you need to tell to somebody that is hard to say, don't build up to it, Just say it and then clean up after that is much better.

A (19:48)

There is a certain sort of kindness, I think, to direct communication. It's the kindest thing.

B (19:52)

Yes, and by the way, that has taken me many years to learn partly. Guatemalan culture is very roundabout. You know, I joke that in Guatemala, the way to say yes is to say. You just say yes. The way to say no is you say, yeah, that's kind of how people say no. And I've had to learn to be a lot more direct.

A (20:14)

I'm curious, too, in terms of how you've built the company. We were talking a little bit before we started recording that I actually lived in Pittsburgh for two and a half years. Duolingo is headquartered there, was founded there, has always been there, is still there. And I was saying, my husband and I used to drive by the office all the time, and I would tell him he should apply for a job at Duolingo. He never did. So don't worry, you haven't hurt anyone's feelings in my household. But there is a tech scene in Pittsburgh, in case people aren't aware. I mean, CMU is there, there are some great schools there and sort of an incubator for young talent in technology. But by no means would it compare, say, to like a San Francisco or New York. Why stay? What has it meant for the company to be based in Pittsburgh, good or bad, as opposed to being in, like, the most obvious place that you could be as a headquarters.

B (21:02)

I think early on Pittsburgh was great for us, and it still is. One of the reasons Pittsburgh was great for us was. There's a number of reasons, but one of them is, you know, education, which is what we decided to focus on, has not been a fad, you know, certainly not a tech fad anytime recently. And one of the things that happens, particularly in Silicon Valley, is that, you know, everybody's usually chasing fads, which. There's nothing wrong with it. I mean, the current fad is AI. Great. This is good. But, you know, if we wanted to concentrate on education, I think it has been good that we have been in a place where we just have a time to develop it. And it's taken us a while to develop the system that we have, but it's been a blessing that we have been kind of left alone. So that's good. The other thing that Pittsburgh did, and we were talking about this before we started it, allowed us to build an executive team that I claim was basically better than the company, because we had a number of people in the executive team that were in Pittsburgh for one reason or another. They had aging parents, they had something. They had to be in Pittsburgh. Had they been in San Francisco, they would have gotten a job at a much larger company because they, you know, they had jobs at much larger companies before, but then they had to move to Pittsburgh. And then we were kind of the best game in town. So this is why they definitely, definitely

A (22:33)

the best game in Pittsburgh.

B (22:34)

So a good example was our first cmo, Cammie Dunaway. I mean, she wanted to be in Pittsburgh because her son was going to Carnegie Mellon. But Cammie had been the head of all marketing of Yahoo when Yahoo was in its heyday. She then had been the head of all marketing of Nintendo. So these were much larger companies than when Cammie joined Duolingo, which had like, I don't know, 2, 300 employees. But she really wanted to be in Pittsburgh because of her son, and she joined us. So that, I think that really helped us. Now, to be fair, at this point, we also have large offices in other places, including one in New York, where I'm really spending more than half of my time, I think now. So, yeah, it helps to have offices in other places, but I think Pittsburgh in general has really helped us.

A (23:17)

Well, don't give up on Pittsburgh. I have a soft spot for Pittsburgh.

B (23:20)

Don't worry.

A (23:21)

You mentioned AI a minute ago in the context of Silicon Valley. And I have to ask you also. I mean, I could ask you all sorts of things about it, because it is what so many people spend a lot of time talking about, especially if you were ever in San Francisco. And, you know, in 2025, you sent out this internal memo. You've talked about this publicly before, that you described the company would be shifting to, quote AI first. Right. AI would not just be about productivity, but about getting closer to your mission. You know, I went and looked, that email is still on your LinkedIn page. And the responses are painful to read. I mean, they are scathing, as I'm sure you know. A few people, you know, suggested using AI to replace CEOs. Just, for example, can you tell us a little bit about the thinking behind that memo and in your view, sort of what, where it went off the rails? Because I think from a, From a publicity point of view. Right. It. It certainly did. It was not the most generous round of press the company has ever received.

B (24:16)

No. Okay. The reality is, you know, the goal of the memo was, by the way, internally, this memo was not controversial at all. I mean, it's just kind of how we've been operating since we launched Duolingo. We decided to bet on technology. We were making a thing that teaches people, and we're doing so with technology. Our belief is that technology can really improve learning outcomes and provide education to a lot of people, et cetera. That has always been our belief, and we have always used AI. Whatever AI was at the time, it was not large language models, but whatever AI was at the time, we've always leaned in on this. So internally, this was just not controversial. We've always done this. But I really wanted the company, everybody to understand inside the company that AI, the latest advances in AI, large language models in particular, were something that were going to really help us teach a lot better and that we should therefore adopt it as much as possible. I think I failed at providing enough context externally at what that really meant, and a lot of people made a lot of assumptions here. For example, some people thought that what that meant was that I was going to fire all of our employees. Interestingly, we've never done a layoff, which is rare for tech. I mean, most tech companies have done a bunch of layoffs. We have never done a layoff. And in fact, last year we grew. In the year where we were being accused of having fired all our employees, we actually grew our employee base. But I think in general, we failed to provide context. I think people assumed that this was about cost cutting, about whatever it was. But the reality is we have this internal. We haven't really published about this, but we have this internal. We call it the golden rule of AI, which is we use AI to help our learners. That's it. If we can do something to help our learners by either teaching them better or by being able to provide more, write more content or something like that, then we will use AI. The goal is not to cut costs or anything like that. Sometimes we end up Cutting costs because it's actually cheaper to do certain things with AI. But that is not the goal. And what has been pretty positive with AI is there's all these things that we couldn't do before. So, for example, a really good example is teaching conversation. So when you're learning a new language, one of the important things you got to learn is how to talk to other people. In the past, before AI, the only way we knew how to get people to practice conversation was to practice with another person. But it turns out I don't know the exact number, but about 90% of people don't want to talk to another person in a language that they're not very comfortable with. They may tell you they want to, but the reality is they're too shy to talk to another person in a language that they're not comfortable with. So even whenever we offered the chance to practice conversation with another human, people were just not using that. But when we added, with AI, we now can have you practice with basically an avatar. And it works. It really teaches very well conversation. And people are not shy about it. They think that the AI is not judging them. Even though the AI is judging them, they think the AI is not judging them.

A (27:32)

I mean, this all makes totally sort of rational sense. And I think, you know, for the last few years as generative AI has been more and more and more in the conversation, I think this notion of AI to democratize access to education, right? You hear that all the time. Whenever I talk to any technology executive, any sort of AI evangelist, I say, well, what are sort of the best use cases you can talk to me about in the context of gen AI that aren't sort of like ChatGPT writing my emails, right? Because that's fine and good, but like, I can write my own emails. You hear about healthcare, you hear about, you know, modern medicine, and you always hear about the democratization of education. When you look at the landscape outside of Duolingo, do you feel like that promise is being seized by Silicon Valley, by the technology industry, or not? What are you seeing?

B (28:28)

I think there's huge promise for AI to help education. And by the way, I also want to clarify another thing that is important. This does not mean replacing teachers. We don't want to. You know, I was a former teacher, I was a professor at Carnegie Mellon. That is not the aim here. I mean, teachers, like I was saying at the beginning, teachers inspire people. They do a lot of really amazing things. But it does mean, you know, help augment. I know. It's also the case that there are many people who don't have access to a good teacher.

A (28:59)

Right.

B (28:59)

So I think we really can improve, you know, learning outcomes everywhere in the world with AI. So there's a huge potential here. We're not there yet. I mean, nobody is there yet. I think Duolingo is ahead of everybody else in terms of certainly the number of people that are learning with us. I mean, we have more people learning languages on Duolingo in the US than there are people learning languages across all high schools combined, for example. So we really have more people learning on Duolingo than any other system. But we're still not quite there yet. I mean, for example, our math product, we're still working on it, but I think within a couple of years, my hope is that it'll be a really good after school thing, that if you're struggling in math, you'll just be able to use Duolingo and just get much better at it. But I don't think where the opportunity is not yet ceased. We're not there yet. I mean, most learning is still happening in the same way that it was happening 20 years ago, I think.

A (29:53)

Sure. And when I talk to educators and sort of academia, there is so much fear, there is so much anger and fear and frustration. And it's interesting to see how the promise and potential of the technology and what's talked about has by no means translated into the classroom. And how do we bridge that divide?

B (30:16)

I mean, the way we're seeing it is really, I'm not sure about the classroom. So again, our goal really is not to substitute teachers. They're needed, we want them. But I think the way to bridge that divide is kind of what we're trying to do with our math product. It's basically supplementary after school thing. The teacher will be able to motivate. The reason you're learning about trigonometry is whatever this helps us build buildings or whatever it is that they're going to motivate it. They're going to do an explanation. But later the AI or the app is going to, you know, give you a lot of personalized practice. There's a lot of potential there. It's going to take a few years

A (30:57)

for that few years?

B (30:59)

I think so.

A (31:00)

Okay.

B (31:01)

Depends on the subject. So I think with, with languages, we're kind of already there. I think you're going to see something similar with other subjects.

A (31:09)

So to me there's a scenario where I can sort of take everything that you're saying and I can imagine Duolingo basically Leveraging artificial intelligence to become more and more and more dominant. Right. The sort of dominant educational player across a lot of different contexts. Right. But is there a scenario where you see AI as a competitive threat, right, to your company? Like, how do you think about AI as promise and peril? What does that look like for you?

B (31:35)

Yeah, for us, I mean, we're very happy with the fact that AI is there, that it's allowing us to do everything. You know, some people talk about as a potential competitor because, you know, you may, for example, you may try to learn a language with ChatGPT or something, right?

A (31:50)

Exactly.

B (31:50)

Yeah, it probably works. But the thing that we have going for us is this is one of the main things that I've learned over the last several years about running Duolingo. The hardest thing about teaching somebody anything is keeping them motivated. The actual, you know, you can actually learn mostly, by the way. You could probably learn a language. It's very slow and very hard, but you could probably learn a language by reading Wikipedia.

A (32:15)

It's probably the case.

B (32:16)

It would be awful. But you certainly can theoretically learn, I don't know, quantum mechanics by reading Wikipedia, like, theoretically. But who does that? I mean, that's 0.1% of the population has enough desire and self discipline to

A (32:34)

be able to stamina.

B (32:35)

Yeah, like most people just. That's just not how you do things. And what we do really well with dueling was we keep you motivated and we keep you motivated to spend more and more time learning it, et cetera and things like that. To learn, for example, a language, Learning a language, an easy to learn language, like Spanish for English speakers. Spanish is a particularly easy to learn language. Takes like 500 hours to get to a pretty good level. So we need to motivate you to stick around for 500 hours. And that's hard if you're just kind of querying ChatGPT, being like, okay, now tell me how to say hello. Hola. Like, that's hard to do for 500 hours. And that's the thing that we're really good at. Porn is everywhere. Millions stream it every day. Yet nobody seems to know who really controls the business. I'm Alex Barker. I'm a journalist at the Financial Times. Years ago, my fellow reporter Patricia Nielsen and I started digging into the porn industry to find out how the money flows. And in our new audiobook, the Kink, the Hidden Business of Adult Entertainment, you'll hear our investigation into the power and influence that drives the most taboo corners of the Internet. Find the Kink Machine. The Hidden Business of adult entertainment at Pushkin FM audiobooks or at Audible, Spotify or wherever you get your audiobooks.

A (34:10)

I'm curious, you know, Duolingo has been in the news, I would say on and off in the last few months. Because your share prices are down, right. And you've talked about this, you've characterized this as being about making long term decisions as opposed to optimizing for short term gain. You also talked earlier in this conversation about the company ultimately is one that is mission driven.

B (34:27)

Yeah.

A (34:27)

Can you talk a little bit more about that? I mean, that is relatively unusual in the context of a publicly traded company. I think.

B (34:36)

Yeah. I mean, there's a number of things. It is true. What we want, not just me, but the executive team at Duolingo and our board and I believe most Duolingo employees, is we want to have long lasting impact in education and as much positive impact as we can in the world. We also believe that in the long term that is also the largest possible business we can build. If we have a billion people learning on Duolingo, that is a large business. So we believe that and we really want to get there. We want to get to the point where we're actively teaching, call it a billion people. I don't know the exact number, but we want to get there. And because of that, over the last few months, I have decided to make a number of moves that what they do is they in the short term lower the amount of money that we're making. Not by a lot, by the way. It's relatively small amounts.

A (35:32)

Is there an example of one or two that you've made?

B (35:34)

Yeah, for example. Okay, so let me try to explain a little with a little more context. The way we improve Duolingo is we run close to 1000 AB tests per quarter. What that means is an A B test is just trying something different on some fraction of the users. So it could be as simple as changing the color of a button. And then we measure whether this does something good for us. And what does something good mean? It can mean making us more money or getting people to recommend Duolingo more to their friends, or getting people to stick around for longer, etc. Some of the AB tests that we run are to make more money. I'll give you a toy example. We could run an A B test that at the end of a lesson gives you two ads instead of one. What that would probably do is it would make us more money because for two reasons. We can sell two ads. And also some of the people that don't want to see ads because now there's two instead of one. Will pay to subscribe, to get rid of the ads. So we'll make more money in two ways in that way. But having two ads also probably scares some users away. Oh, yeah, it sucks because it sucks. So that is a toy example. That is not something that we're doing, but this is an example of something that if we were really trying to increase the amount of money we make, we would favor things like putting two ads at the end of a lesson. Over the last few months, what we have done is we have stopped any kind of experiment that hurts user experience in exchange for monetization. Because for a year or two, we were doing some experiments that we would see it and we would do the experiment. The results would be something like, oh, whatever it was is making us 50,000 more dollars per day, but it's scaring away 1,000 daily active users. We would take that exchange because we're like, well, $50,000 is a lot of money per day. We are no longer taking that exchange. We're like, if it is scaring any users away, if it's driving any users away, we are no longer taking that exchange. And what that has done is it's not that our revenue has gone down, it's that our growth rate of revenue has basically gone down a little bit. We're growing our revenue a little slower. That doesn't mean that we're a worse business. That just means that we are building something for long term.

A (37:52)

How do you keep a board, happy investors, happy shareholders, and users all at the same time? I mean, you talked a bit at the start about the challenge of being a CEO. But even just reading about these decisions that you've made and sort of the impact, I mean, that is a dance that you are doing on a daily basis.

B (38:11)

I can only imagine that is true of any CEO. That's what you have to do.

A (38:15)

Well, but I would argue that some companies are all in on shareholder return. You know what I mean?

B (38:22)

Maybe. The interesting thing is I fundamentally believe that I am also all in on shareholder return, but only if you look at a span of a decade, not next quarter.

A (38:33)

Okay.

B (38:34)

So I really do believe that if you are a shareholder for Duolingo and you wait a decade, the biggest possible return we can give you is if we are building a company that will try to have a billion active users, as opposed to a company that, you know will scare off all its users now, but kind of squeeze them for as much money as possible. That would probably be a, you know, a nice company, but it will not be as big as one that has a billion active users. So I claim that what I'm doing really is for our shareholders, but the ones that are thinking long term, sticking it out. Yeah, that's so. So, yes. But yeah, I mean, that is the job of the CEO, trying to do what's best for everybody. And really it is different groups. I mean, there's the employees, there's the users, there's the shareholders. And they all have sometimes competing desires.

A (39:25)

I can only imagine. Now, one thing that you have done, sort of coming out of Recaptcha and duolingo and, you know, you've amassed wealth and influence and so on and so forth. You have this foundation, right, that is focused on helping people in Guatemala. One of the things it focuses on is girls education. Why?

B (39:47)

Well, I really love my country, where I came from, Guatemala, we're trying to help as much as we can. Certainly we're trying to help with girls education. Education in general is probably the biggest focus. We support a number of schools, we support all kinds of educational initiatives. We're doing education. We're also doing environment conservation in Guatemala, which is quite needed. And we're doing a little bit of democracy and also some work here in New York that is mainly done by my wife. She does kind of work with in particular women's rights here in New York. So that's all the things we're doing. For me personally, my biggest thing, even though I love New York, my biggest thing is helping Guatemala for me personally. And yeah, the education is just something I really want to do now in particular for girls. One of the things that ends up happening in a country like Guatemala, which is pretty common in a lot of countries, is that when families have to choose and a lot of families have to choose who they send to school because the kids work, they work in the fields, et cetera. Sometimes they choose to send to school, they typically favor the male. That's just the culture and we're trying to combat that. And that's why we're supporting a bunch of schools that are girls only that are doing incredible work.

A (41:11)

Now in 2020, you also became a major shareholder in La Hora.

B (41:14)

La Hora, yeah.

A (41:15)

La Hora. Sorry. Clearly I have not been doing my Duolingo Spanish. It's a Guatemalan newspaper, so clearly not a money making proposition. I mean, I work in media, I can tell you that. Why wade in. Why wade into journalism?

B (41:28)

I should have talked to you before you.

A (41:30)

I would have warned You? Yep.

B (41:32)

No, I'm a huge fan. It's the largest newspaper that still does investigative reporting in Guatemala. I think it's really important for democracy. You are completely right. This is not a money making situation. It is, you know what our goal is to break even. That is not currently succeeding in our goal. Well, yes, but that is. Our goal is to break even. But, you know, we're, you know, the team there is doing. I'm not, I'm only involved monetarily. I'm not involved with any of the editorial or anything. The team is doing that. But I really wanted to support something that is helping with democracy, especially in a country like Guatemala where, you know, historically democracy has not been our forte, let's put it that way.

A (42:22)

Speaking of democracy as not a forte, you know, we're talking about learning and education, we're talking about press freedom. You're an immigrant, Right? And I have no doubt Duolingo serves a disproportionate number of immigrants, given the business that you're in.

B (42:36)

Yeah, we also employ a lot of immigrants.

A (42:39)

When you look at the landscape in the United States right now, we have ICE raids happening in cities across the country. What do you see from your point of view, from your vantage point when you look at all of that?

B (42:51)

Man, it's a pretty complicated topic. I understand illegal immigration. Nobody can be really in favor of illegal. I mean, I guess you can be, but I'm not in favor of illegal immigration. That is just not a thing that I am. But you know, this country was built on immigrants, after all. And, you know, we employ a lot of immigrants, et cetera. So, you know, my main, at the moment, my main concern, you know, I see a lot of different things and you know, there's everything that's happening in the country. The main place where I can affect things, my main concern right now is that our employees are, you know, feel welcome and safe. I mean, the vast majority of our employees are in the United States. Not all of them. We have offices in London and Beijing. But the vast majority of our employees are in the United States. And my main concern is that they are feeling welcome and safe. And that is not always the case. That's my main concern at the moment.

A (43:44)

I can imagine. And how do you navigate that as a CEO? How do you handle that part of your job?

B (43:50)

It's one of the things that I have to do. In our case, we try to provide as much support as we can. This is just the reality of it. Part of the reason we have offices in Beijing and London is because sometimes we cannot get the visa for the employees here and then they have to leave the country. That is the case.

A (44:09)

Now. Moving on to look ahead. It's 2026. You've gotten into chess, math. You have, I think 250 programs in 42 languages. What does success look like for Duolingo moving forward? You've Talked about a 10 year horizon, you've mentioned a billion users. But when you really drill down, if we talk again in a year and then we talk again in five years, what do you want to be able to tell me Wired that you, that you did, that you're doing?

B (44:41)

I really want it to be the case that we have a significant fraction of the world's population learning meaningful things on Duolingo. I really do believe that we are a better alternative to social media.

A (44:57)

Yes.

B (44:57)

Wow. I would agree. I really do believe this is an important part of our job. I mean, we want it to be the case. The phone screen, sorry, phone time is good time.

A (45:06)

I mean the idea of having to pull someone off of TikTok and convince them to spend time learning a language is like that is not an easy task.

B (45:13)

No, because it turns out, you know, some of these social media sites, all of them are very addictive. It just turns out. But you know, I think that, you know, Duolingo is not as fun as TikTok. It's not. But we are pretty fun. And I'm hoping that the sum of that, the fact that Duolingo is pre fun, plus some amount of self determination, like 10% of self determination, gets people to spend more and more time learning something. So I'm really hoping that again we can get a significant fraction of humanity's population learning important things. At the moment we have languages, chess is growing quite a bit. We also have math and music. We are going to be doing a lot of really awesome improvements to both our math and music courses. I think we're gonna do other subjects. You know, I'm not announcing any new subjects because the reality is we're not working on any new subjects. But I would really like to do science. Now when I say science, I also, before we did chess, I kept on saying our next subject is science and then we did chess. Before we did music, I kept on saying our next subject is science and then we did music.

A (46:22)

So I mean there's a lot to science. I guess there's a lot to music to it.

B (46:25)

Yeah, I mean, I don't know when we'll end up doing science, but I really wanna do as well I think we can really make the world better if we do that.

A (46:34)

Well, I would love to wrap up with a very quick game if you're up for it.

B (46:37)

Sure.

A (46:38)

We invented it. It's called Control, Alt, Delete. I want to know what piece of technology you would love to control, what piece you would alt so alter or change, and what you would delete. So what would you vanquish from the Earth if given the opportunity?

B (46:56)

Okay. I love to control AI.

A (47:00)

All of it.

B (47:01)

Sure. I mean, I think it just has a lot of promise, but it is, you know, like everybody else, I'm both excited and nervous.

A (47:10)

Sure.

B (47:10)

I'm nervous about what it could do. I think most everybody is pretty nervous too. So I'd like to. I don't know if I, me personally, would like to exactly control AI, but I would like to have some amount of oversight on AI so that it doesn't do the things I don't want it to do.

A (47:25)

Part of the regulatory body governing AI.

B (47:27)

I would like to do that so that it doesn't go haywire. That's Control, Alt, the alter. Let's say I would like to alter social media so that it teaches you something. That's kind of what we're trying to do with Duolingo, but it's not exactly social media. But I like to, you know, some of that time should be spent better bettering yourself as opposed to whatever the hell it is that you're doing now. Delete. People may hate me for this, but I would delete anything related to cryptocurrencies.

A (47:58)

Anything. Anything at all.

B (47:59)

I am just not.

A (48:01)

No crypto, no trading, not a fan.

B (48:03)

I'm just not a fan.

A (48:04)

Why not? That's interesting. That's a good one.

B (48:09)

For the last however many more than 15 years, there have been a lot of attempts at making good use of this technology. And the reality is we haven't really found one. Other than gambling with bitcoin.

A (48:24)

Right.

B (48:24)

That's pretty much we have not found. I mean, there's like, oh, we can have art with it. No, you really can't. Like, there's all this stuff that we've tried.

A (48:31)

Well, wait, are we throwing out the blockchain too? Oh, yeah, the blockchain is going. Goodbye.

B (48:35)

It's fine. It's a fine thing. But if it were up to me, I would delete this and have all these people that are really smart that are trying to figure out what the next price of bitcoin is, to instead be working on bettering humanity in one way or another, as opposed to doing that.

A (48:51)

So I take it you are not invested in any cryptocurrencies.

B (48:55)

I bought like a couple hundred dollars of something a while ago and it's probably worth like a few thousand dollars now, so. Great. But I. I lost my password for it, so.

A (49:04)

Oh, so there are many, many, many, many tragic stories of that nature.

B (49:08)

Yeah, but this is not the reason. This is not the reason why I don't like it. I just, I just, I'm just not a fan.

A (49:14)

You want to delete it because you're very bitter about those.

B (49:16)

Yeah, those five grand lost. No, that's not the reason.

A (49:20)

Well, this was so much fun. Thank you so much for taking the time. Lovely to have you.

B (49:23)

Thank you very much.

A (49:28)

The Big Interview is a production of Wired and Kaleidoscope content. This episode was produced by Adriana Tapia, music and mixing by Pran Bandy. Our showrunner is Anne Marie Fertoli, and Kate Osborne is our executive producer. The show was fact checked by Matt Giles and I'm of course, your host, Katie Drummond, Wired's global editorial director. Check back here on Thursday for the latest episode of Uncanny Valley, where Wired's writers and editors add you to the Slack thread. How do we maintain a strong defense in a world that's rapidly changing? Join us on Strength in Numbers, a podcast from UVA's National Security Data and Policy Institute. I'm your host, Jennifer Strong. In each episode, we'll take a look at the materials powering today's most advanced technology, how it's being used on the battlefield, and ask how the United States can stay competitive against potential adversaries.

B (50:26)

Voters should be concerned about all this. We want America to be strong, but we've got to be strong and smart.

A (50:31)

That's all coming up this season of Strength in Numbers. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts

B (50:40)

from prx.