The new course offerings put the Pittsburgh company two steps closer to its goal of building one app for all subjects, and making that free, high-quality education "universally available."
"We focused on language first, because it's one of the most powerful tools for creating economic opportunity and connection," Duolingo's co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Severin Hacker said Wednesday at the company's fifth annual DuoCon convention.
Like language, the new subjects transcend cultures, while building on the app's gamified approach, said Mr. Hacker, who boasts a 1,495-day streak.
"Math and music power personal growth, opportunity and connection and they're mastered through foundational skills that are perfect to learn the Duolingo way," he said.
Other subjects are expected to follow, especially now that the company is rapidly building prompts with generative AI.
Duolingo is also using artificial intelligence to build profiles of every user, offering more targeted lessons built on predictions of learners' success.
Premium users can experiment with Duolingo's integrated GPT-4 technology, which is giving creative voice to the company's characters like the sassy, purple-haired Lily.
AI lead Klinton Bicknell said AI — which has long helped the company send those pesky, often passive aggressive progress notifications — is now helping the company put a more personalized tutor in people's pockets.
"I can't wait for you to try it," he said.
As its computers learn more about users, Duolingo's engineers are learning more about their products.
"We learn a ton from just having features out there in the world," said Vanessa Jameson, Duolingo's director of engineering for new subjects, who built the music course alongside Karen Chow, a professional pianist with a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology.
In a joint interview before the conference, they expressed hope that the music course would appeal to all age levels and experience. It includes over 200 "fun and familiar tunes," that are also old enough to be copyright free.
"We worked really, really hard to make sure that the course is usable by everybody, even if you have no experience at all," Ms. Jameson said.
The course takes about 50 hours to complete, although Ms. Jameson said she expects users to repeat lessons to perfect their score. Backing tracks and positive reinforcement help make the learning feel more like a game, which Ms. Chow said she enjoyed even as an experienced musician.
While they don't see the app as a replacement for traditional education, the developers do hope it will fill a gap: More than 3.6 million students in the U.S. don't have access to music education, according to the nonprofit Arts Education Data Project.
The math offering also targets a real world need, focusing on practical applications like calculating tips and hourly wages.
Also at the conference, co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn spoke with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai about her work advocating for education access.
"Technology is part of education; it is not a replacement," she said.
Without fighting back against a regime that banned education for women, Ms. Yousafzai, who survived a Taliban shooting as a teenager, said she might not have realized that there was more to the world beyond the valley she grew up in.
"I used to think the world ended right there by those mountains," she said.
Her advice for tech companies like Duolingo was to listen to the people they are trying to help. Let them guide the aid processes and draw on their sense of hope, she said.
"There is something we can learn from those girls who, despite all the challenges, keep on fighting for their right to education."
Fluent in three languages, Pashto, Urdu and English, Ms. Yousafzai said she now has a 220-day Duolingo streak in Swahili and Arabic.
©2023 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
