Is Duolingo Max with Chat-GPT AI worth it?

Let's chat about Duolingo Max! Duolingo's new foray into AI. They worked with Open AI to develop a chat gpt 4 reskin. But is it worth it?

Thank you so much for watching! Hope you enjoyed it!

If you're new to my channel and videos, hi! I'm Evan Edinger, and I make weekly "comedy" videos every Sunday evening. As an American living in London I love noticing the funny differences between the cultures and one of my most popular video series is my British VS American one. I'm also known for making terrible puns so sorry in advance. Hope to see you around, and I'll see you next Sunday! :)

If you want to know HOW I make my videos including gear, lighting, all the tiddly bits that connect it all together, (with cheaper alternatives and kit I used to use), I've listed each item, what it's great at, and why I use it on the gear section of my website here:

Otherwise: here's a quick list of some of my kit without descriptions from the above link:

Camera: Sony A7siii

Main Lens: Sony 24mm f/1.4 G-Master

Secondary Lens: Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 G-Master

Main Light: Aputure 120d mkii

Shotgun Microphone: Sennheiser MKH-416

Really useful SSD: SanDisk Extreme Portable 2TB

[judith]

I made my 200 day duolingo streak, which is an entirely meh announcement but I am ridiculously proud and no one in my life would care 😂

[luke]

10 years from now they load Duolingo AI into an animatronic Duo owl who beats the shit out of you if you lose your streak.

[lumis]

They should really integrate it into Super Duolingo. It's already pretty expensive...

[shapelessed]

DuoLingo Max - An equivalent of releasing the AirPods right after "courageously" removing the headphone jack.

[Vollkornmuffin]

2023 in a nutshell: "What if we add Chat GPT to it?"

[charlesjoseph]

This sounds a lot like how I use BingAI to help with my Japanese, but BingAI does that for free. It's not perfect by any means, but it's helped me wrap my head around grammar stuff that I was confused about, and I was able to have some nice simple practice conversations. The only real difference I see with the Duolingo AI thing would be the ability to talk to the duo specific characters, but that just does not seem worth the price to me.

[mackenziemc]

I’m at 1056 day streak. Last year around this time I was in the hospital with cancer and while I was terrified of dying I was also terrified of losing my streak.😂 I really enjoy Duolingo even though it’s sometimes difficult with my Dyslexia

[allanjmcpherson]

This sounds like Goldilocks pricing to me. It's a common strategy. A company makes one product (or service) that is fairly basic, a second product (service) that's noticeably nicer for a fair bit more money, and a third option that's only marginally nicer but way more expensive to make the second option look like a steal. The point of the third option isn't to sell the third option. It's to make people choose the middle option because they feel like they're getting a deal.

[DeadDancers]

I have aggressively told Duolingo an answer was wrong because it (technically) was but I was also wrong as well. People like me could train the machine into being wrong more often.

[jamesbuchanan]

It's strange to me that they didn't do the obvious thing, which is to allow AI to develop infinite exercises.

[LauraDFTBA]

I love the Duo plushie lurking in the background, v on brand. I am so tired of every company and their uncle jumping on chat AIs. Not that any of Duolingo's new changes really effect me - as a Swedish learner it's very obvious (and frustrating) that the real care is focused on French/Spanish.

[sarabaldeschwieler]

I like Junior. He balances my inner Lily.

[watchingworm]

I heard that ChatGPT 4 is quite expensive to use. Some developer said that 200 messages can cost as much as 10 dollars.

[y_fam_goeglyd]

I was just about to mention the forums when you did. I packed in my nearly complete French course after their "redesign" and have restarted Dutch (the redo messed up my many notebooks worth of study system, I changed my style for the Dutch). Without active forums it's making it much harder than learning at school. What I don't get is the "guidebook" at the start of each unit is only a few sentences which turn up in the exercises. There's not one grammar lesson in it! After nearly 1500 days without a break it's very disappointing.

[Drew-Dastardly]

By far the hardest part of learning a language is not the strange alphabets and runes, which are very worthwhile for anyone to learn. Online text discourse is relatively easy.
It is actually hearing and speaking it in real life which is the hardest. My introduction was hearing Russians "cyka blyat" when I nailed them on CSGO. So good!
I think if a ChatGP AI is coupled with a language AI (I mean a speech AI) to interact with it would be an excellent use rather that learning nothing but swear words (which are also essential).

[teresagreen]

I’m on a 153 day streak learning Italian. I have the Super version, seeing as I’m learning neither French nor Spanish it doesn’t sound like I’ll need to worry about the Max version any time soon!

[craigbryant]

This is my feeling on everything that is currently integrating AI. We, the consumers, are paying to improve the features developed by these tech companies who will then go on to use the improved versions in other fields for which they will charge us even more money.

[TheGTRacer]

As a Finn I definitely was not expecting my language be mentioned in one of your videos, hope you enjoyed your stay!

[durabelle]

Yes please to a video of you learning Finnish! Also impatiently waiting for a Tampere vlog on the other channel. Us Finns just love hearing foreigners' opinions of our country 😆

[chriskix]

The roleplay feature seems pretty cool but I'm afraid it wouldn't be much use to people like me who are learning more rare languages. There's less media online for AI to consume to learn say, Gaidhlig, which has fewer than 100, 000 speakers worldwide and even less who are considered fluent. And I can tell you just from seeking further learning opportunities online, there are not many people out there writing, creating videos, etc in the language. There just is not much active discourse taking place in Gaidhlig online for AI to observe. So, that sucks.

We already don't get stories on duo with Gaidhlig, and the forums feature was really the best way to deepen understanding of the language inside the app. I've turned to Reddit, YouTube, books, music etc for further enrichment but i would've done that anyway. The forums are missed.