ShaoLan once tried to speak French in France. The locals asked her to switch to English. That moment explains exactly why Luis ...
What Luis von Ahn said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of Duolingo, discussed the company's new chatbot feature for language learning, explaining that it allows users to practice conversations with an AI to avoid the embarrassment of speaking to humans imperfectly. He noted the chatbot is currently text-based but voice recognition is coming soon, with plans to correct speech and eventually create an AI companion that feels like a friend, akin to the movie 'Her'. When asked about the Turing test, he said some are working to pass it but we are far from that, predicting computers will have full human-like conversations in some years. He also confirmed that more humans than bots use the internet. The conversation included a Chinese lesson on saying 'chatbot' (liaotian jiqiren), and von Ahn responded to anecdotes about Microsoft's Xiaoice and Tay, acknowledging Tay's failure.
Key takeaways
Duolingo launched a chatbot to help users practice conversation without embarrassment.
Voice recognition is coming to the Duolingo chatbot soon, with speech correction planned.
Von Ahn predicted computers will have full human-like conversations in some number of years.
Von Ahn confirmed more humans than bots use the internet.
If you can say, I promise you, you go to China, they will love you.
Hello and welcome to Talk Chinesey, where we teach you Chinese with ease. My name is Shaolin. I'm going to teach you a useful phrase of Chinese every day. In this episode, we are going to talk about something really exciting called chatbot in Chinese. We have Luis Von Ahn, the founder of Duolingo. I'm a big fan of Duolingo. Hi, Luis.
Okay. Chatbot. Chatbot. I know you just launched a really exciting chatbot. I played with your chatbot yesterday when I was doing my French lesson with you.
Yeah, we on Duolingo we just launched a chatbot to try to practice your language. The idea is that we help people practice conversation by practicing with a robot instead of another human. And the reason for doing that is that many times, you know, when people are learning a language, they need conversational practice. And many people are very ashamed of talking to somebody else in a language that they don't fully know. So we decided to do something where people get to talk to an artificial intelligence. And that really makes people not be embarrassed when they're speaking a language.
Yeah. Well, I could sense that because my pronunciation in French was so poor. And then when I was speaking in France, people had to ask me, they very politely ask me to switch to English. They basically say, 'We gave up on you. Just speaking English.' So I can see the need to have a chatbot. All right. The way to say chatbot in Chinese.
That means to chat, to chat with someone. That means, uh, bored. People get bored, and then so when they get bored they talk, and they talk to each other. And tian actually means sky. Imagine in the UK when people get really bored and they want to pick up some subject, they talk about weather. So it's probably the same in Chinese. So they chat about the sky. That means to chat. Is second tone. You go up a little bit.
Yep. So when you put bored and chat with the sky together, you pronounce as liaotian. So, liaotian is a common word you use almost on a day-to-day basis in China. And then with oh, let's chat a bit or oh, let's chitchat a little bit. And it's actually the three characters as you can hear the sound. Once you break them down, it's all that easy and individually each character is very useful. So, let's have a look at them one by one. Ji means machine. So what you do is you just make it flat, first tone.
And qi, the second character, qi, that means instrument. So that's qi or equipment, is a fourth tone and you go down. When we use fourth tone we actually try to make it very heavy and like an ouch sound or angry sound. So qi.
Qi. Perfect. That's the same as Tai Chi. Yep. And ren means person. So you put machine and equipment together, that means machinery. And when you add person behind machinery, that means robot. So person pronounced as ren.
Ahn, L. V. (2026, May 12). Too Embarrassed to Speak? This Robot Will Listen | Chatbot 聊天機器人 liáo tiān jī qì rén | Luis von Ahn [Interview transcript]. ShaoLan: Chineasy & Lifeasy. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1153979/
MLA
Luis von Ahn. "Too Embarrassed to Speak? This Robot Will Listen | Chatbot 聊天機器人 liáo tiān jī qì rén | Luis von Ahn." ShaoLan: Chineasy & Lifeasy, 12 May. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1153979/.
BibTeX
@misc{ahn2026_1153979,
author = {Luis von Ahn},
title = {Too Embarrassed to Speak? This Robot Will Listen | Chatbot 聊天機器人 liáo tiān jī qì rén | Luis von Ahn},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, ShaoLan: Chineasy \& Lifeasy. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {may},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1153979/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
