5 ms·

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 ar

by cjfd 7mo ago

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.

Havoc 7mo ago
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
- ares623 7mo ago
  They can rent their own tools, more like.
  - Kinrany 7mo ago
    No, they can make their own tools. They rent someone else's tools in the process of making their own tools.
    - ares623 7mo ago
      They can continue renting to maintain the tools they make.
      - just6979 7mo ago
        They _have to_ continue renting, because they didn't learn anything while "making" those tools.
    - matheusmoreira 7mo ago
      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.
    - tkiolp4 7mo ago
      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
- cyanydeez 7mo ago
  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 7mo ago
    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
    - cyanydeez 7mo ago
      You'd bet that if LLMs were democratizing, they'd be 100's of feet away from it. That they're charging in suggests it can be just as feudal as every other technology. It has no moral value. It's a tool; a butcher can swing an axe in the kitchen as much as in the battlefield.
- ldng 7mo ago
  Terrible argument. They always could learn and DIY.
  - kqr 7mo ago
    ... 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.
  - edgyquant 7mo ago
    You have to have a knack for it, most people are not programmer types
    - simonw 7mo ago
      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.
      - sarchertech 7mo ago
        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.
- elzbardico 7mo ago
  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 7mo ago
    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.
    - wiseowise 7mo ago
      This is literally the same for all professions, only in CS/SE it is for some unknown fucking reason considered “a problem”. Why isn’t there “replace extremely expensive doctors/lawyers with AI” movement?
      - braebo 7mo ago
        There will be, code was just a natural first start because it’s just text.
      - zdragnar 7mo ago
        Overly optimistic people are already talking about using LLM based AI as a way to provide healthcare access in underserved (i.e. rural) areas. There's already lots of studies going on for things like using AI to identify tumors and cancers in MRI and other images. There's national headlines every few months for lawyers getting in trouble for submitting LLM hallucinated citations in court, so lawyers are starting to do it to themselves as well. It's early days yet, because unlike most CRUD apps, the consequences of hallucinations and outright bad calls in medicine and law are life ending. Unless the bubble pops soon, it's coming though.
- just6979 7mo ago
  Anyone could make their own tools before this as well. Just needed to learn something first. Real democratizing or programming is free access to compilers, SDKs, etc. AI coding does nothing to help that. In fact, it hurts it, because those non-programmers only get access to the AI tools on the terms of the AI companies. Sure they could train their own models, but then we're back to having to learn things.
xg15 7mo ago
It's "democratizing" in the same way Uber "democratized" taxis...
- Kinrany 7mo ago
  Taxi became more accessible and reliable, didn't it
  - cratermoon 7mo ago
    have you priced an Uber lately?
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - oblio 7mo ago
    For a second, while the hook was sinking in the fish's lip. Now Uber is being "democratized" to billions in profits.
tkel 7mo ago
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.
- jasode 7mo ago
  >Democracy is about governance, not access. It can be about both meanings. The additional meanings of democratize to describe "more accessible" are documented in Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries: https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/democratize#:~:text=make%20(something)%20accessible%20to%20everyone https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/dictionaries-thesaur... https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democratic#:~:text=relating%2C%20appealing%2C%20or%20available%20to%20the%20broad%20masses%20of%20the%20people%20%3A%20designed%20for%20or%20liked%20by%20most%20people https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democratic#:~:tex...
  - mannykannot 7mo ago
    With the consequence that disambiguation may be needed.
- tbrownaw 7mo ago
  The claim isn't that the LLMs are democratized. The claim is that LLMs are causing software development to be democratized. As in, people who want software are more able to make it themselves rather than having to go ask the elites for some. As in, the elites in IT now have less power to govern what software other people can have. (Or alternatively, it's getting harder to stamp out "shadow IT" and all the risks and headaches it causes.)
  - nextaccountic 7mo ago
    Hard to state that LLMs "democratize" software development when LLM companies can ban you from software development for any reason or no reason at all, and without recourse of any kind. The HN frontpage currently showcases an Antigravity ban that applied across Gemini, and there's few companies that provide affordable LLM services. The actual elites greatly extended their control over software development, that's the opposite of democracy
heliumtera 7mo ago
You are assuming democracy wasn't designed to crush the individual and reduce autonomy at all cost. How cute.
YeGoblynQueenne 7mo ago
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.

by cjfd 7mo ago

Havoc 7mo ago

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

ares623 7mo ago
They can rent their own tools, more like.
- Kinrany 7mo ago
  No, they can make their own tools. They rent someone else's tools in the process of making their own tools.
  - ares623 7mo ago
    They can continue renting to maintain the tools they make.
    - just6979 7mo ago
      They _have to_ continue renting, because they didn't learn anything while "making" those tools.
  - matheusmoreira 7mo ago
    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.
  - tkiolp4 7mo ago
    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
cyanydeez 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
  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
  - cyanydeez 7mo ago
    You'd bet that if LLMs were democratizing, they'd be 100's of feet away from it. That they're charging in suggests it can be just as feudal as every other technology. It has no moral value. It's a tool; a butcher can swing an axe in the kitchen as much as in the battlefield.
ldng 7mo ago
Terrible argument. They always could learn and DIY.
- kqr 7mo ago
  ... 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.
- edgyquant 7mo ago
  You have to have a knack for it, most people are not programmer types
  - simonw 7mo ago
    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.
    - sarchertech 7mo ago
      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.
elzbardico 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
  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.
  - wiseowise 7mo ago
    This is literally the same for all professions, only in CS/SE it is for some unknown fucking reason considered “a problem”. Why isn’t there “replace extremely expensive doctors/lawyers with AI” movement?
    - braebo 7mo ago
      There will be, code was just a natural first start because it’s just text.
    - zdragnar 7mo ago
      Overly optimistic people are already talking about using LLM based AI as a way to provide healthcare access in underserved (i.e. rural) areas. There's already lots of studies going on for things like using AI to identify tumors and cancers in MRI and other images. There's national headlines every few months for lawyers getting in trouble for submitting LLM hallucinated citations in court, so lawyers are starting to do it to themselves as well. It's early days yet, because unlike most CRUD apps, the consequences of hallucinations and outright bad calls in medicine and law are life ending. Unless the bubble pops soon, it's coming though.
just6979 7mo ago
Anyone could make their own tools before this as well. Just needed to learn something first. Real democratizing or programming is free access to compilers, SDKs, etc. AI coding does nothing to help that. In fact, it hurts it, because those non-programmers only get access to the AI tools on the terms of the AI companies. Sure they could train their own models, but then we're back to having to learn things.

xg15 7mo ago

It's "democratizing" in the same way Uber "democratized" taxis...

Kinrany 7mo ago
Taxi became more accessible and reliable, didn't it
- cratermoon 7mo ago
  have you priced an Uber lately?
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- oblio 7mo ago
  For a second, while the hook was sinking in the fish's lip. Now Uber is being "democratized" to billions in profits.

tkel 7mo ago

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.

jasode 7mo ago
>Democracy is about governance, not access. It can be about both meanings. The additional meanings of democratize to describe "more accessible" are documented in Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries: https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/democratize#:~:text=make%20(something)%20accessible%20to%20everyone https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/dictionaries-thesaur... https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democratic#:~:text=relating%2C%20appealing%2C%20or%20available%20to%20the%20broad%20masses%20of%20the%20people%20%3A%20designed%20for%20or%20liked%20by%20most%20people https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democratic#:~:tex...
- mannykannot 7mo ago
  With the consequence that disambiguation may be needed.
tbrownaw 7mo ago
The claim isn't that the LLMs are democratized. The claim is that LLMs are causing software development to be democratized. As in, people who want software are more able to make it themselves rather than having to go ask the elites for some. As in, the elites in IT now have less power to govern what software other people can have. (Or alternatively, it's getting harder to stamp out "shadow IT" and all the risks and headaches it causes.)
- nextaccountic 7mo ago
  Hard to state that LLMs "democratize" software development when LLM companies can ban you from software development for any reason or no reason at all, and without recourse of any kind. The HN frontpage currently showcases an Antigravity ban that applied across Gemini, and there's few companies that provide affordable LLM services. The actual elites greatly extended their control over software development, that's the opposite of democracy

heliumtera 7mo ago

You are assuming democracy wasn't designed to crush the individual and reduce autonomy at all cost. How cute.

YeGoblynQueenne 7mo ago

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.