Lessons learned at Duolingo on using Generative AI for product development

Name: Lessons%20learned%20at%20Duolingo%20on%20using%20Generative%20AI%20for%20product%20development
Uploaded: 2025-10-01T18:43:26.421Z

Posted Oct 01, 2025 | Views 17

# AI

# Product Engineering

# Communication

Natalie Glance

Chief Engineering Officer @ Duolingo

Natalie is a lifelong learner and seasoned leader with extensive experience at startups and established companies. She’s currently the Chief Engineering Officer at Duolingo.

At Duolingo, Natalie ensures engineers can help set product direction and strategy. She’s championed a culture of extensive A/B testing, and is excited about the ways generative AI can both build new features and accelerate content creation for these features. She oversees many of the efforts dedicated to scaling Duolingo’s technology to new subjects, like Math, Music and Chess.

Natalie is passionate about mentorship and education. She co-founded the Int’l AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), which offers an annual Adamic-Glance Distinguished Young Researcher Award for a promising young independent researcher in the field of computational social science in the early stage of their career.

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SUMMARY

Slide deck available here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RH8PWEh87UBM_lIEPvqijx9fSaFCjCJbrkjgNWYO4BY/preview?slide=id.g376d43a3b9a_0_0

Generative AI is changing how we build and what's possible for our users. In this session, Natalie Glance, Chief Engineering Officer at Duolingo, will share lessons learned based on real-world case studies.

You will learn about:

The importance of communicating clear principles on the use of AI Trade-offs in using model APIs vs self-hosting vs on-device Buy vs build vs wait decisions in the face of rapid change Minimizing switching costs, how to decide which model to use and the importance of evals Pros and cons of fine-tuning and custom models The technical and change management challenges of retrofitting systems to use AI How AI turbocharges 0 to 1 innovation

Natalie's experience leading engineering at Duolingo, where AI has transformed the product and user experience, makes her uniquely qualified to share these insights. This session will help you build a new operational model for the AI era.

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Lessons learned at Duolingo on using Generative AI for product development

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