I don't see how AI can become democratized. (I don't follow this stuff too closely, but) it seems like larger models with less quantization and more parameters always outperform smaller models of the same type, and that trend isn't stopping, so if/when we get consumer hardware and local models that equal today's SotA SaaS models, the SotA SaaS models of that time will be even better, and even more impossible to run on consumer hardware. Not to mention that local AI is reliant on handouts from big business - both in base models that the community could never afford to train themselves, and in high-VRAM GPUs that can run big models, so if SaaS AI is more profitable, I don't think we'll be "allowed" to run the SotA at home.
Human skill was already democratized in that anyone can obtain skills, and businesses have to be good at managing those people if they want to profit from those skills - ultimately the power is in the hands of the skilled individuals. But in the hypothetical AI future, where AI has superhuman skill, and human skills are devalued, it seems like there will be a more cynical, direct conversion between the money you can spend and the quality of your output, and local/self-hosted AI will never be able to compete with the resources of big business.