Summary: Luis is an inventor and computer science professor at <a href="https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/education/faculty/vonahn-luis.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Carnegie Mellon</a>. 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 <a href="https://www.google.com/recaptcha" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ReCAPTCHA</a> proved users were humans while also digitizing books. The company was sold to Google in 2009. He also founded the language learning app <a href="https://www.duolingo.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Duolingo</a>, attracting over 150 million users in its first four years. Luis won a <a href="https://www.macfound.org/fellows/793/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Macarthur Genius Grant</a> in 2006.<br> Luis speaks with Jessica Harris about how he launched ReCaptcha and Duolingo, from scratch.<br> <a class="wpaudio" href="https://fromscratchradio.com/audio/LuisVonAhn-FromScratch-102822.mp3">Listen to the interview</a><br>
