Luis von Ahn

Luis von Ahn (born 1978 in Guatemala City) is a computer scientist and MacArthur Fellow who invented CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA — harnessing millions of humans to digitize books — before co-founding Duolingo in 2011 with Severin Hacker. The green owl became the world’s most popular language-learning app, and von Ahn embraced generative AI early, using it to power conversation features and to mass-produce new courses.

The memo and the mob

In late April 2025, von Ahn told employees Duolingo would become “AI-first,” gradually stop using contractors for work AI can handle, factor AI use into hiring and performance reviews, and add headcount only when teams could not automate further. The backlash was immediate and brutal — app-store reviews, canceled subscriptions, and comments like “AI first means people last.” Within weeks he clarified that AI would not replace employees; by August he admitted the memo “did not give enough context,” noting Duolingo has never laid off full-time staff in its history. In 2026 he scrapped the rule evaluating employees on AI usage altogether, saying he would not force the tools on anyone.

Through the whole saga, the underlying strategy never changed: Duolingo kept shipping AI-generated courses and AI-powered features, hiring grew, and von Ahn continued to argue that AI enables one teacher’s worth of tutoring for every learner on Earth. The episode — alongside Tobi Lütke’s Shopify memo — became the case study in how not to announce an AI transformation, even one that works.