It is democratising from the perspective of non-programmers- they can now make their own tools.
What you say about big tech is true at same time though. I worry about what happens when China takes the lead and no longer feels the need to do open models. First hints already showing - advance access to ds4 only for Chinese hardware makers
Programming is probably the most democratized profession ever.
The problem was never access barriers, but the fact that people are too lazy to study even a 200-300 pages on something as simple as ruby on rails.
I think there’s an actual barrier. I’ve seen it, especially since the (until recently) brisk market for programmers was sucking people out of traditional engineering.
It’s puzzling because programming seems so easy and fun. And even before LLM’s, we had StackOverflow after all.
But for some reason a lot of people just hit a wall when they try to learn programming, and we don’t know why. The “CS 101” course at colleges has extremely high attrition.
A minor secondary effect may have been that if you were not a software developer, your boss didn’t want to see you programming.
They can rent their own tools, more like.
No, they can make their own tools. They rent someone else's tools in the process of making their own tools.
Not entirely true. For instance if I use LLMs to build an ios app I still need to pay apple $100 to use my own app for an undetermined amount of time.
If I build a web app i still need to pay for a domain, for a server for egress.
We are just renting. Wouldn’t be surprised if in the future this gets even more depressing
One day people will not even be able to own computers anymore. They will be owned, controlled and rented out by corporate elites for limited purposes only. The personal computer will probably either cease to exist due to economic factors. It will probably be made illegal for citizens to own free computers. We'll probably need licenses to operate one.
The mere concept of people "making their own tools" is just comical in this bleak timeline.
They can continue renting to maintain the tools they make.
Terrible argument. They always could learn and DIY.
You have to have a knack for it, most people are not programmer types
I don't think it's about being a "type" so much as choosing what to specialize in.
I could learn plumbing skills and do the plumbing around my house. I've chosen not to.
There’s definitely a type. My wife is much smarter and harder working than me, near perfect SAT score, made it through an engineering degree at a much better school than I went to. Then did med school, residency, and fellowship.
She’s insanely quick. I once told her about one way hashing and before I was even half way through the explanation. Before I and ever said a thing about what they were used for she stops me and says “oh so that’s why websites can’t just send you your password when you forget it”.
At her job she has to call time of death for kids, tell people their kid has cancer, deal with people who literally want her dead, work shifts where she is the one ultimately responsible for the life and death of every patient that walks in the door, and work 7a-4p one day then 10p-7a the next.
She can do all that but she says that she hated her Matlab class in college more than anything else and she could absolutely never do my job because she doesn’t have it in her to bang her head against a wall chasing down a bug for an hour that turns out to be a typo.
... if they are privileged enough to be able to take time away from family and jobs.
The current crop of LLMs are subsidised enough to make this learning less expensive for those with little of both time and money. That's what's meant by democratised.
The people taking the lead in most of Ai in America are bootlickers of fascism. So not much difference than China on a long enough time line.
The US losing the plot doesn’t change the fact that the tech is fundamentally democraticism on a personal level.
If all the frontier models disappear into autocratic dark holes then yeah we have a problem but the fundamental freedom gain an “individuals can make tools without knowing coding” isn’t going anywhere