Closed-source models aren't "democratizing" access to anything. If you wanted to hire a contractor to write some code for you, that's always been possible.
Part of democracy is that it's available to all citizens, and not just for the rich. Yes, it's always been possible to find someone, but not for $200/month that will work tirelessly wherever you want them to. 9:00 am Monday? great. 7pm Tuesday? Also great. 4 am on Sunday? Just as great, for an LLM.
How long will this heavily subsidized price of $200/month last? Do you really think these companies are going to let you pocket all the surplus value forever?
We all know that the music is going to stop eventually and that the landscape after that is going to look very different. Subsidies will stop and investors will want their trillions in returns. Talking about "democratization" while everyone is just using other people's money is completely premature.
Airbnb "democratized travel" for a while and now they're more expensive than their predecessors.
So as soon as all software has been written that can be written, they'll jack up the prices? After that comes to pass, I'm willing to pay them a premium on having AI write additional software.
> So as soon as all software has been written that can be written,
I'm not sure where you got this from. They'll jack up the prices at some undetermined time in the future once the weight of reality overpowers the manic hype we've been experiencing for the past few years.
My expectation is that this will start unfolding within the next 5 years and people will start looking back to today as the golden age of AI where everything was cheap, exciting, and ad-free.
Vibe coders don't code, they let code. So LLMs democratise access to coders.