Duolingo CEO just went on record to say that all future language teaching will be AI, but physical schools and teachers will continue to exist "to provide childcare".

That is a very polarizing way to phrase it.

Imagine public schools in San Francisco were to offer parents a deal: we'll increase the median student's rate of academic progress by 30%, but we'll also cut school hours by 30%.

Do you think people would vote overwhelmingly for that deal?

My suspicion is that they would not. For politicians, 'providing childcare' and 'providing employment for unionized government employees' are both more important than student learning.

Luckily for teachers and schools in general, (foreign) language skills are just a small part of overall school curriculum and the higher you go the more this becomes true. LLMs not taking that part away anytime soon.