The article talks about 'software development will be democratized' but the current LLM hype is quite the opposite. The LLMs are owned by large companies and are quite impossible to train by any individual, if only because of energy costs. The situation where I am typing my code on my linux machine is much more democratic.
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
That's a great point but you didn't make your linux machine yourself. A large tech corp made it, and each of its parts. Some of us could probably make their own computers but I don't think I'd be able to make one smaller than the house I live in. There's something to be said about large-scale automation and that's not that it "democratizes" anything. Like you say: quite the opposite.
It's "democratizing" in the same way Uber "democratized" taxis...
You are assuming democracy wasn't designed to crush the individual and reduce autonomy at all cost. How cute.
Right, people misuse this term "democratized" all the time. Because it sounds nice. But it's incorrect.
Democracy is about governance, not access.
A "democratized" LLM would be one in which its users collectively made decisions about how it was managed. Or if the companies that owned LLMs were ran democratically.