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.
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-thesaur...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democratic#:~:tex...
(Or alternatively, it's getting harder to stamp out "shadow IT" and all the risks and headaches it causes.)
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
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.
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
The mere concept of people "making their own tools" is just comical in this bleak timeline.
I could learn plumbing skills and do the plumbing around my house. I've chosen not to.
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.
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