Designing with AI: building the flagship GPT-4 language product - Edwin B, Megan B (Config 2023)

TL;DR

Duolingo Max is a new subscription tier powered by AI that offers personalized language learning experiences, including mistake explanations, role-playing conversations, and improved progress tracking.

Transcript

foreign welcome back to config day two I am so excited to meet all of you and although you've heard it many more times I'll say it once more we are so happy that you are here my name is Alex I'm an engineering manager here at figma but more importantly I am here as your host for the second half of the day my first order of business as host is to do... Read More

Key Insights

• 🖐️ Duolingo Max leverages AI technology, specifically gpt4, to enhance language learning experiences by providing personalized mistake explanations and role-playing conversations.
• 🪡 The team at Duolingo identified important learner needs, such as grammar understanding, speaking skills, real-world conversation preparation, and progress tracking, and designed features to address these needs.
• 🖐️ Creating engaging and rewarding role-playing conversations required collaboration between machine learning engineers, creative writers, and learning scientists to inject character personalities, plot twists, and realistic obstacles.
• 😵 Refining prompts for the role-playing feature involved a promptathon, where a cross-functional team created a formula for prompt writing, generated examples, and established a rubric for ongoing prompt iteration and assessment.

Questions & Answers

Q: How does Duolingo Max incorporate AI into its language learning experience?

Duolingo Max uses gpt4, a powerful generative AI model, to generate personalized mistake explanations and role-playing conversations for learners, providing more interactive and engaging language learning experiences.

Q: What learner needs does Duolingo Max aim to address?

Duolingo Max aims to help learners better understand grammar concepts, improve speaking and pronunciation skills, feel more prepared for real-world conversations, and have a better understanding of their progress in language courses.

Q: How did the Duolingo team create engaging and rewarding role-playing conversations?

Through collaboration between machine learning engineers, creative producers, and writers, the team developed prompts that injected character personalities, plot twists, and obstacles into the role-playing conversations, making them more realistic and interesting.

Q: How did the team refine the prompts for the role-playing feature?

The team conducted a promptathon, involving learning scientists, product managers, designers, and more, to create a formula for prompt writing, generate high-quality conversation and plot twist examples, and establish a rubric for ongoing prompt iteration and assessment.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Duolingo Max is a new subscription tier that incorporates AI technology to provide advanced language learning features, such as personalized mistake explanations and role-playing conversations.

• The Duolingo team identified learner needs in grammar understanding, speaking skills, real-world conversation preparation, and progress tracking, and designed features to address those needs.

• The team leveraged gpt4, a new generative AI model, to generate content and prompts for the role-playing feature, but had to iterate and refine the prompts to ensure a rewarding and engaging user experience.