[Havoc]

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

[elzbardico]

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.

[analog31]

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.

[ares623]

They can rent their own tools, more like.

[Kinrany]

No, they can make their own tools. They rent someone else's tools in the process of making their own tools.

[ldng]

Terrible argument. They always could learn and DIY.

[edgyquant]

You have to have a knack for it, most people are not programmer types

[kqr]

... 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.

[cyanydeez]

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.

[Havoc]

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