I hope so too, however cheap is relative. One's ordinary morning coffee is a full day wage for someone else. If we could have decent models fitting laptops of most students, that would be point where we could possibly treat AI as we treat calculator or computer today.
Just to put things in context, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8444gex65o shares income for a good number of people now a days. (note that many of those workers are taking care of a family of 2+ members, most of the time)
I remember a TI-89 being mandatory for my AP math classes (calculus and statistics). It was utterly essential for solving problems in a reasonable amount of time. There were programs available to assist families who couldn't afford one so their children wouldn't be left behind.
AI in it‘s current phase, definitely. However, we‘ve been seeing the transformer architecture plateauing in the last couple of years. There are still improvements, but open source models are catching up.
I feel like at this point it’s an inevitability that given enough time, capable models will be cheap enough for everyone.
If poor students have capable models but rich students have much better models that go the extra mile for a great mark and do everything in a single prompt, it would still be unfair.
For it to be fair, you would not only need good free models, but actual parity between free models and the highest subscription tier the big AI companies can offer. And I don't think that will happen in the short or mid term future.
When I was in AP classes in high school, you were required to have a TI-89 calculator. If you couldn't afford one, there were assistance programs.
You were not allowed to use a TI-92, which was the next step up. It had built-in solvers for many kinds of problems.
I'm not saying this isn't a concern, but addressing financially-based inequities in learning is not a new problem within certain bounds. There's established ways to deal with it. If we can get AI cheap enough that you can cover a year of education with $100 then we're in a good range.
Just to put things in context, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8444gex65o shares income for a good number of people now a days. (note that many of those workers are taking care of a family of 2+ members, most of the time)