Speak is personalizing language learning with AI

Our Executive Function series features perspectives from leaders driving transformation through AI.

Speak⁠(opens in a new window) is a language learning app that sets users on the path to fluency with the world’s most advanced AI tutor. We spoke with Connor Zwick, CEO of Speak, about how AI is reshaping language learning, the breakthroughs enabling more natural AI tutors, and the challenges of scaling an AI startup in a rapidly evolving technical landscape.

What was your first meaningful encounter with AI and how did it shape your plans for Speak?

I think if I look back over the last 10+ years, there are a bunch of different moments that come to mind—things that really left an impression on me and changed the way I think about AI.

Obviously, in 2012, there was the AlexNet paper, and even just doing image recognition with these deep neural networks was really, really cool. Then AlphaGo was another big moment. But for me personally, I was up close and personal with AI in 2015. My co-founder and I were doing our own independent AI research, trying to learn as much as possible—reading all the papers, implementing things. We scraped a bunch of YouTube data as a side project.

We put all the data into the model, not really knowing what to expect. On the first training run, we came back a few hours later and tested it. We had built a model that was better than the state of the art in accent detection—classifying what accent someone was speaking with.

“We realized deep learning was going to be incredibly powerful. If you just had enough data, it could do amazing things and, in many cases, completely smash state of the art...”

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When you set out to build that AI language tutor, how did you think about injecting AI into the platform in a way that felt natural to language learners?

AI evolves really quickly—in that kind of environment, how do you think about effectively planning your product roadmap for the future?

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