Duolingo-Double-Down

I'm sure you've heard the news, Duolingo has decided that it will cease to hire people for jobs it needs doing if AI can do it for them. This means that all lessons will be graded, evaluated and improved using Artificial Intelligence for all aspects of it's user experience.

What happened? Why is this App, which was one of the best in the business, sudden nothing more than a load of cow dung that playfully threatens to kill you if you don't do a lesson?

As a long term user, I can say that this has been happening for a LONG time now. And the term I will use to explain it is this, enshittification.

Now, enshittification is a real word that is described as the slow decline of a service to the point of unusability. We've seen this with many items within our lives, usually technology such as software and programs where the services we pay for (or use for free, such is the case for Duolingo) slow decline in quality. I remember when Duolingo was actually useful, explaining and giving answers to what you were doing wrong. When you got questions wrong and ran out of hearts, you could refill them by practicing. Now everything is adverts, and they want you to use all your diamonds so you have to buy them or buy the super package. Something I will never do.

You see, what has happened with the enshittification of Duolingo is that they have removed the human aspect to their service. You don't have to be a linguistic graduate to know that the whole point of language is to communicate with your fellow humans, and the removal of this shows that they are only thinking about the game rather than the educational material. We all knew that Duolingo was the gamification of language(1), but now it's just the Temu of language. Poor quality with poor usability.

The CEO has recently doubled down on his comments, saying that AI will be a better teacher of language than any human teacher, showing that he isn't actually in it for humanity.

Where did all this AI dreaming come from? Why are we so attracted to removing anything to do with community? The idea that Duolingo or any language platform would be better if left to an Artifical Intelligence is just crap! But it's not alone, nearly all companies have removed people as a cheap replacement to employees, even if the whole point of their business is humanitarian. Banks removing people in their phone calls, customer services being replaced with fake voices. Even adverts are clearly AI, even the ones that litter Duolingo.

I think what we've stumbled across is the natural progression of capitalism, which arguably started as a way to improve services through competition but became a sedative. Duolingo does not care about you learning a language or gaining knowledge or skills in what they offer, they only care about you buying their service. It's all about streamlining that cash to the shareholders over any actual product, and Duolingo does not have a product anymore.

It's stupid and irresponsible for a someone in an educational(2) platform to say that artificial intelligence is somehow superior to teachers, because an app cannot teach you everything. And if we've noticed anything in the last few years, the management of this failing app has shown only complete negligence to their product. Teachers and first hand experience will always outlive it, and it cannot give you an actual understanding of the cultures that the tongues come from.

That's another point, this app is the most superficial way to look at a language. It teaches you the grammar, but not the phrases and logic that comes with the language. The AI understands where to put the words, but not the history or the uses of them. "In bocca del lupo" is Good luck in Italian, could AI tell you why?

NO!

Of Course not! And people know this with google coming up with phrases like they are common knowledge because someone asked what it meant(3)!

I've just came out of Hospital and am really struggling to write this, so I'm just going to leave it here. But I'm ready to call myself a Neo-luddite, because this world is sleepwalking to a death of any form of actual skill, and it's happening because some rich dick wants to make a quick quid off something we are hardwired to want to learn.

(1) Which is a fair arguement for a bad learning platform, but does encourage revisiting what you've done. Say what you want about gamification, I think it works well to help solidify the knowledge you've gained.

(2) I mean this in a very loose way now, but also Duolingo should not be the only way you learn a language. Other ways like face to face lessons. Duolingo was great for revision, but even now that is under scrutiny.

(3) https://futurism.com/google-ai-overviews-fake-idioms You can't lick a badger twice.

Hell, what an idea!

Many cultures on this wandering rock we call earth have an idea of hell.

We have the Christian idea of hell, the fire and the brimstone, very similar to the Islamic Jahannam, also we have Gehenna in Judaism, a place of purification. In the un-Abrahamic corner we have the Norse, Germanic and Celtic(1) for Europe(2), the Naraka for Hindus, Reincarnation kharma for Buddhists and the countless other religions(3).

What's interesting with the more 'pagan' beliefs I use here is that hell is not hell. There is a place of punishment and atonement, but it's temporary until purification happens and you live in a place a better person than before, similar to Gehenna in that respect, but even then places like hell or the greek underworld don't see it as a place of damnation, but just another place after the death of your mortal body. You have to make sure you pay the ferryman, as the gods were more fickle then.

That's what interests me is that so many different creeds don't need a 'Hell' as we know it, especially if you are one of the two major religions in the population. They need a place where bad people go to rectify their past mistakes, but those mistakes don't damn them for an enternity of torment. If anything, it is much more human.

Going to where we get Hell from, which is the Norse 'Hellheim', its just the other place that is separated to from the gods, Valhalla. Greece has something similiar in the elysium fields, but the many thing is that those not favoured by the gods go here, the other place.

And it's not a bad place, but if you've been worshiping Thor all your life, you might want to spend the rest of your afterlife in their presence. Your heaven is battle, and that's what he offers.

But if you're a farmer, an eternity with your family in endless fields that cater for your desires is heaven. You aren't favoured by the gods for any militaristic reason, but that's just how you lived your life, and that's still valid.

So why do we need an idea of an afterlife? Surely when we die, we just cease to exist, so why worry?

Imagine if you were a person in a village in the medieval period, maybe before that actually. You would be aware that people die, and some of them will be family members and friends. You will be full of questions like 'where are they' and 'where will i go?'. And the people around you will understand the question with the world around them.

Sometimes it's punishment for not meeting expectations or norms, the Abrahamic way. Sometimes it's cost and benefit, such as the dealbrokers of the ferryman. Others will be reincarnation, where the soil that feeds the plants is the body of the deceased, continuing the cycle of death and rebirth. All of which shows an understanding of the environment that they inhabit. All of them speak of a place where they will be looked after and continue to live.

I can't ignore the athiest point, which I must point out is different to the nihilist point(4), where there are no gods or other worlds, we have what we have and that's it. But you could also argue that the life you live before an afterlife is still important as it is a process of living. The atheist stance that we should look after the world as there is nothing after is echoed in the statements of polytheists where the earth is an important place in the order of things. We need to look after the earth as much as our place in the afterlife. Hell and Valhalla are separate places to Earth (Midgard) but is still an important place that needs to be treated correctly. The different worlds are like a desert and a forest, where there are different ecosystems but are still part of the whole.

So why are we so against the planet? If it is as important as the afterlife(5) why do we crave the place afterwards?

The rise of this could be brought on by the ideas of the conservative christians, the Puritans, who beleived that to get to heaven you must work hard. To work is to be a moral being, and we can't escape that fact that so much to do with capitalism is down to this ethical standard. If you are to save your eternal soul and join with your creator, that takes prescedence over the world around you, which could be seen more as a tool or a test. It is temporary, unlike what comes after.

But I can a parallel with places like Valhalla, where the chose of the gods go. Heaven gets conflated with work and worship to meet god whilst the other is seen as undeserving. Hellheim is not a place of torture, but a place where the souls go that didn't value the gods. This reminds me of Maori beleifs where the gods don't care about you, but you must treat them with respect (Tapu). But if you worship them, they would value you and respect your service. But the difference is that they are indifferent.

So Hell becomes undesirable from a point of prestige, but also corruptable if you're in power. A king for example could instill the fear of Hell (the debunked fire and brimstone) in their populace to make them be loyal to them and their rule. It's not a far stretch to say that this is what happens in companies, where productivity is a direct descendent of the royal and puritan thought. Hell is bad because it is not heaven, therefore you must do everything in your power to evade this.

I think my last point here though is that a lot of convertion and preaching is quite unsustainable. The Vikings for me show that. To die outside of battle is undesirable and you will go to Hell instead of Valhalla. So to counter this you must always show your commitment to the gods by constant acts of faith to gain favour. This leads to a need for conquest after conquest until you die, and I can't see that as a life.

So in conclusion, Hell is underrated, both in its history and its corruption to its evil counterpoint. Most cultures see two versions of the afterlife and hell is just the common one, and whats wrong with that? That's wonderful! You live, you die, there's no great judgement as you cannot live a life wrong(6). Even the Jewish hell is a place of cleansing and not torture. But it's been co-opted as a place to avoid as a form of control, where there is a right way to live and all others must be ignored. This has lead to a great robbery of a paradise we currently inhabit.

Maybe this is equally a paradise, lets not make it a parking lot.

(1) I'm taking liberties with Celtic as we know little about their ideas of afterlife, but there is evidence in an idea that we are somewhere afterwards. Also it might have been equally polytheistic.

(2) North western, I don't know much about the East, but I do want to know more in the future. I know siberia has animistic beliefs in the mountains. Also the Roman pantheon, but rule of three.

(3) I would include the many different beliefs, but I don't know enough to do any justice. So if you feel excluded, please don't and please let me know! I love to learn!

(4) Nihilism should be combated with everything. I don't understand how people can accept it. Absurdism just makes more sense than just saying nothing matters. Grow up.

(5) You could even say that it's even more important than the afterlife, as you need to exist before you de-exist.

(6) Unless you piss off the gods or spirits. Then you must atone.

Knowledge, Gatekeepers and Swindlers

Turning the classic model upside down!

With my practice, both in art and experimentation, understanding the past is a massive part of what I do. If you asked seven years ago that I would be able to speak Welsh, have a working understanding of British History, and shift my interests away from painting to a more sculptural angle, I would have told you Ewch i ffwrdd!

But it's more important than that, understanding the way things were made in the past really opens up your world! To carve a lump of cherry into a frame or a ornamental animal head really brings you to a process that thousands, maybe millions, of people from many different walks of life have copied and done the same. It's something that anchors us to a continuing process of making, a genealogy of art that is just magical!

But there is an hierarchy that is we adhere to that is counter to this. A horrible hierarchy that removes us from a truly inclusive society. An hierarchy so baked into our ways that many different types of knowledge have been or are being lost to time.

So what hierarchy is this?

Long story short, it's the Roman Empire (1).

Every empire has seen itself as an extension of the Roman empire. The British, French, Spanish, even the American states which might as well call itself an empire could fit this discription. You can see this in the laws, language and artistic production.

For example, as an empire stretches out, it tries to show it's importance by referencing the greatest powers that came before. This means many styles fall out of favour to bring back the older ones to show this. Here in Britain, you see that in banks and governmental buildings that try to replicate the old roman buildings that littered Europe. The Royal Exchange at Cornhill is an example of this.

But in the process, we use the material of the oppressor to the detriment of more local craftsman. Wood is seen as outdated, stone and glass slivers it's way in.

But what has this got to do with knowledge? Everything I would say.

To prop up such an idea such as empire, you have to make everyone one homogenous group. You aren't from Derby, you're British. You're not from Quimper, you're French. To get that idea across, you have to get rid of any ideological separation of location and people. Local/Folk art is derided as "primitive" to the standard now brought, meaning more people are alienated from the stories and styles that made them.

An example is the elevation of the "classics" of Greek and Roman literature. They themselves are not bad, they are great, but the idea that they are the best and should supplant stories such as the Mabinogion or the old folk tales is just harmful.

Another reason its dangerous. In the late 1700's to the late 1800's there was a move to categorise everything and remove the folk from knowledge. Each plant and animal was given a latin name, dissected and studied. But in doing so, they completely erased how the plants and animals interacted with the environment. Something we are rediscovering now, though it should never have been lost in the first place.

Local/indigenous people understood the land better than those who seeked to control it. Understanding is Knowledge, but there isn't a correct form that knowledge takes. It can be stories and myths as much as science, and you don't need to learn knowledge through books, you can also learn it from the people you talk to. Friends, family, strangers, enemies. They are all forms of knowledge that we can learn from.

The problem is now that knowledge is respected in books and journals, and those who speak of knowledge could be malicious in their own ways, asking for donations to became "Alpha males", something that was seen as a scientific fact until it was disproven. And now we have lost the stories of warnings and horrors that can lead us down these paths.

The good news here though is that we can make new knowledge and pass it down the next generations. Like woodwork, anyone can do it if they are willing to learn and explore the world a little more than before. The warnings can be relearned, just in a new way, away from mere profit towards inclusion and fulfilment.

I said at the begining I was a painter. I still am, but with the change in interest to a more decolonial practice I have to reckon with the ideas of "Fine art". Painting, sculpture and all the other ways of making art has been poisoned to regurgitate the same stuff that the market requires, or even the state requires. The Abstract Expressionists, my favourite movement, was quite literally funded by the CIA to counter the equally repressive Soviet Union. With that in mind, a lot of paintings are just building upon foundations holding up capitalism. The movement was human, but it was stripped of ideological parts to force a narrative that only destroys. Mark Rothko knew that, and look where he ended.

So now I look away from what's in the galleries and look at what's in the museums and the local craft houses, because that's where you are going to find the real teachers of life.

Just keep in mind that there are monsters in life who want you to be one way, and then there's the pagan way that asks you what do you want to know.

(1) Those bastards again.