It’s somewhat exciting to see the commodification of AI models and hardware. At first I was concerned that the hyperscalers would just own the whole thing as a service that keeps squeezing you.
But if model development and self hosting become financially feasible for the majority of organizations then this might really be a “democratized” productivity boost.
The hyperscalers will always own the best models, and even if you're willing to excuse that, requiring organization-levels of funding to run a decent model locally hardly makes the tech "democratized". Sure, you'll always be able to run ${LOCAL_MODEL} on your personal hardware, but that might be akin to programming using Notepad if the gap with the best models in the market is wide enough.
But if model development and self hosting become financially feasible for the majority of organizations then this might really be a “democratized” productivity boost.