In my world, using Claude is not free as in beer. It might be in yours, but in mine it isn't. I can use LLMs locally and remotely but there's always a cost attached to it (privacy is also a cost).
I feel like it is a painter who devalues the works which can be made with tools like Photoshop and Illustrator. It feels like elitism, while you could also value the lower barrier point of entry.
That's a very fair point in regards of the cost. I should have thought about that more.
The analogy is very interesting, but I think perhaps I didn't do a good job of articulating my point - I feel I was trying to say that everyone*, myself included, is a Photoshop user now, and we know how much work it is or isn't to achieve some goal with it (which was previously impossible or difficult when we all just had paintbrushes and easels). I'm not doing a good job of articulating my point now either unfortunately.
Perhaps I'm trying to say that we all* own photocopiers now? I'm not sure.
I appreciate you taking an opposing view. I will think about my opinion some more.
That's great, my previous post and this one are meant to ponder over not necessarily to convince.
I believe it is the (partly justified) worry that the craftmanship is devalued, or a tragedy of the commons scenario (the energy industry and meat industry are good examples here).
I've hold the same view about photocamera's (we all carry a digital one in pocket nowadays and can shoot as much as we want to), singing (autotune devalues singing putting more emphasis on the showbiz surrounding music artists), or VSTs (versus analog synths).
We end up with an overflow of information which we can no longer manually process. So we need tooling to do so (for example Spotify or Facebook algorithm).
But you still have people geeking over analog synths. In front row you will hear false notes of a singer. Entire websites and communities exist to filter out good pictures (the only thing I use Bing for is their daily wallpaper), and so on. I still use an analog synth because I love it, and 3 out of 4 family members are singing in leisure time (in an amateur group, but still). With regards to camera, I no longer appreciate such as much but pictures which win prizes I recognize (my father in 60s or 70s won a prize with a bw picture he developed in a dark room himself).
Programming long ago got devalued and it is a process. It perhaps started when delete/backspace got more common (as we no longer required punched cards) or even the succesors of the huge computer at Bletchley Park. But if people say it is all Python and JavaScript fault then I think about Visual Basic and believe something lowering the barrier point of entry was going to become popular. Same with MSDOS (cheap OS for PC), MS Windows (first GUI OS for many new PC users), iPhone (first popular capacitive touch smartphone). Each of these destroyed their predecessor, and such came with downsides which in hindsight seem obvious.
The history of GNOME (Gnome) and KDE is also interesting in this context. Both the licensing but also choice of programming languages. KDE comprising of C++ and GNOME of C, with something like Vala not taking up and GJS too late.
I feel like it is a painter who devalues the works which can be made with tools like Photoshop and Illustrator. It feels like elitism, while you could also value the lower barrier point of entry.