GoKawiilKey Takeaways Duolingo initially tried to evaluate employees on how much they used AI in their work, as part of an “AI first” strategy announced in April 2025.
After employees questioned whether they were being pushed to “use AI for AI’s sake,” CEO Luis von Ahn backtracked and removed AI use as a formal performance-review metric.
Von Ahn said performance should be judged on doing the job “as well as possible,” and that while AI can often help, employees would not be forced to use it when it doesn’t make sense.
In April 2025, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn made headlines after writing a memo calling the company “AI first.” In the memo, von Ahn announced that the language-learning platform would track employees’ AI use in performance reviews.
Now, a year later, von Ahn is backtracking and rethinking how he measures employee performance. He told the Silicon Valley Girl podcast earlier this month that Duolingo no longer considers AI use in performance reviews.
The change arose after employees started to ask, “Do you just want us to use AI for AI’s sake?” von Ahn explained.
“We said no, look — the most important thing in your performance is that you are doing whatever your job is as well as possible. A lot of times, AI can help you with that, but if it can’t, I’m not going to force you to do that,” von Ahn said on the podcast.
He felt as though the company was “trying to push something that in some cases did not fit” instead of “being held accountable for the actual outcome.”
Luis von Ahn, CEO of Duolingo. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The CEO is, however, still sticking to other “constructive constraints” he introduced in the April 2025 memo, including stopping contractor hiring in cases where AI can assume their workload. The memo sparked online backlash, causing von Ahn to later explain in a LinkedIn post that he didn’t believe AI would replace the work his human employees did.
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