The writer is a principal research scientist at MIT and cofounder of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy
While some of us under lockdown churned through streaming services and sourdough starters, others decided to use the time for a little self-improvement — taking up Dutch or Danish, Swahili or Esperanto. Duolingo, the free app many downloaded, has become the world’s most popular way to learn a second language. The company is now hoping to ride that interest into an initial public offering: last week it said it wanted to be valued at up to $3.4bn in its IPO.
But EU proposals for regulating AI threaten the use of one of Duolingo’s niftiest innovations, the English Test, in its current form. They also make it less likely that the next round of similar innovations will be developed in the bloc. That’s a problem.