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At a recent Apple event, the tech giant unveiled that Airpods will now be able to offer live translation abilities, powered by AI. Shares of Duolingo, the language-learning company, dropped nearly 3% that afternoon in response. (Google also added a similar feature to its Google Translate app in August.) But Luis von Ahn, Duolingo’s cofounder and CEO, isnt really worried that real-time translation will be a threat to his business. For one, real-time translation isnt a totally new technology, he says. About 10 years ago, Google did their event, Google IO, and demoed live translation . . . Nine years ago, they did an event again, and what they demoed was live translation. Eight years ago, they did an event, and demoed live translation, von Ahn said on Tuesday, speaking at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York. [Photo: Jonah Rosenberg for Fast Company] These announcements have been happening since Duolingo has been a public company, and its stock will dip, he said, and then bounce back. Language learning means learning it yourself Von Ahn also doesnt think live translation is appealing to Duolingo users. The app’s users generally fall into two big buckets, he noted, the first being the those who are learning English. They actually want to learn English, he said. Phone translation is just not going to do it for them. The other big bucket are people who use Duolingo to learn a language as a hobby. Just like chess, von Ahn said. (Duolingo added chess to its lesson lineup earlier this year). And computers have been better at playing chess than humans since 1997. People are still learning chess. Its not that von Ahn is against AI. Duolingo has been leaning into the tech, too. In a staff memo von Ahn wrote back in May, he detailed how the company would become AI-first. That memo sent off a wave of backlash, as people took it to mean that the company would be replacing its human employees with artificial intelligence. Von Ahn called that misinformation. We have not laid off a single full-time employee, now or in the history of the company, he said. (And Duolingo has actually been hiring since that announcement.) But employees are using AI to do more work. ‘Four or five times as much content’ To teach a language through its app, Duolingo offers users lots of different course contentsentences to translate, short stories to read, cartoons to watch. That’s all always been created with a combination of human work and automation. As time has passed, more and more has been automated, von Ahn said. So now, with the same number of people, we can make four or five times as much content in the same amount of time. The addition of chess is one example. Two Duolingo employees started that project, and neither were engineersor knew how to play chess. Instead, the designer and project manager duo spent six months using AI to “vibecode.” Once the interactions reached a certain level, they added engineers to the team. The whole thing was done from scratch to launch in nine months by a team that was at first just two people, and by the time they launched, it was only six, von Ahn said. And now . . . theres millions and millions of users.
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E-Commerce
The José Andrés Group (JAG) officially announced on Wednesday its partnership with Copia, a technology platform that helps combat food insecurity and reduce food waste by distributing excess prepared foods to local nonprofits. The global restaurant group, founded by celebrity chef and restauranteur José Andrés, is the first Michelin-starred group to partner with Copia. The move aligns with the restaurant collectives mission to change the world through the power of food. What does Copia do? Copia simplifies the logistics behind the surplus food donation process. The tech platform enables businesses such as restaurants, corporate dining brands, and hospitality companies, to easily request pickups of excess prepared food. Partners are matched with local nonprofits to ensure the safe delivery of food donations. Courtesy of Copia Food waste has long been a problem. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an international environmental advocacy group, up to 40% of the U.S. food supply is wasted. That’s enough food to fill the 90,000-seat Rose Bowl Stadium every day. Meanwhile, data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) shows that more than 47 million Americans live in food-insecure households. Nearly 4,000 pounds of food waste have already been donated The partnership between JAG and Copia has already proven to be successful. Restaurants at three locationsthe Ritz-Carlton South Beach in Florida, the Ritz-Carlton in New York’s NoMad neighborhood, and Mercado Little Spain in New York’s Hudson Yardshave been using Copia to distribute excess food to those in need. Nearly 4,000 pounds of food have been redirected since the José Andrés Group started using Copia’s platform. This has resulted in the distribution of 3,292 meals, the prevention of 12,165 pounds of CO2e emissions, and the conservation of more than 900,000 gallons of water, the companies said. Additional JAG restaurants in Washington, D.C., will soon begin redistributing excess food through Copia. “Restaurants have the power to do more than feed peoplethey can fight hunger, fight waste, and fight climate change,” Sam Bakhshandehpour, CEO of JAG, said in a statement. “Partnering with Copia lets us turn that power into action.” On Wednesday, Bakhshandehpour will lead a discussion at The Bazaar by José André in NoMad as part of the Fast Company Innovation Festival. The discussion will explore how the restaurant group continues to innovate on its mission and how other restaurant groups and food businesses can make a difference, such as creating menus that minimize food waste and partnering with services like Copia. Paige Lowe, vice president of customer success at Copia, will also join the event.
Category:
E-Commerce
FedEx will report a quarterly profit hit from President Donald Trump’s decision to end tariff-exempt treatment for popular direct-to-consumer shipments when the global delivery firm reports results on Thursday, analysts said. FedEx’s fiscal first quarter, which ended on August 31, captures the impact from the May 2 end of “de minimis” exemptions for packages from China and Hong Kong. They accounted for roughly three-quarters of the roughly 1.4 billion annual packages that had been admitted to the U.S. under the exemption that let shipments valued at less than $800 enter duty free. The U.S. also removed de minimis exemptions for the rest of the world on August 29, with full financial effects yet to come. “The key focus for investors is likely to be the end of the de minimis exemption globally and potential quantification of this, which could be a negative surprise,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in a recent note. Analysts’ profit targets drifted lower ahead of Memphis-based FedEx’s quarterly report. Late on Tuesday, the average estimate called for a profit of $3.62 per share, above $3.60 per share a year earlier, according to data compiled by LSEG. Analysts do not expect FedEx to issue forecasts for the full year. John Dietrich, the parcel delivery giant’s chief financial officer, said in August the company expected a roughly $170 million hit from U.S. tariffs, largely from goods from China, during the latest quarter. That would represent about 0.8% of overall revenue during that period, Deutsche Bank analysts said. “Extending the exemption’s elimination to the remaining 25% of such shipments is, understandably, not ideal,” Deutsche Bank analysts said. FedEx rival United Parcel Service in July warned the end of de minimis treatment on purchases from China-linked e-retailers like Temu and Shein contributed to a 34.8% drop in average daily volume during May and June. FedEx shares over the last year have traded between $194 and $308, reflecting the economic uncertainty from ever-changing U.S. tariff policies. Shares closed up 0.9% at nearly $228 on Tuesday. FedEx and UPS handle de minimis differently, analysts at J.P. Morgan said. FedEx has focused on shipping parcels from China to the United States, largely by air. UPS is more exposed to e-commerce firms and handles bulk shipments of de minimis packages once they arrive in the country. Air freight demand tumbled with the end of the U.S. de minimis exemptions. That is likely to continue through the end of the year – when holiday gift purchases typically flood the air freight industry with packages. Goods purchases at the higher end of the former de minimis value threshold of $800 could hold up better since wealthy shoppers have continued spending. FedEx and UPS could pick up packages formerly shipped by global postal services, which are rushing to add robust tariff collection capabilities. The loss of de minimis comes as the transportation industry battles stubbornly soft demand from manufacturers and other industrial customers that are a key driver of freight volume. Additional reporting by Abhinav Parmar Lisa Baertlein and Abhinav Parmar, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
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