Luis von Ahn

What this episode covers

Luis is an inventor and computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon . He is one of the creators of CAPTCHA, a system that allows websites to determine whether you’re a human or a computer. CAPTCHAs are wavy, distorted words that people need to type out when they’re submitting a form to a website. Luis’ company ReCAPTCHA proved users were humans while also digitizing books. The company was sold to Google in 2009. He also founded the language learning app Duolingo , attracting over 150 million users in its first four years. Luis won a Macarthur Genius Grant in 2006. Luis speaks with Jessica Harris about how he launched ReCaptcha and Duolingo, from scratch. Listen to the interview

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