[Windchaser]

To put it another way, the cost per advancement increases. That’s “as we advance it becomes more difficult to advance”. However, because of the prior advances, you also have more resources to throw at future advancements.

So, then, the question is whether the “profits” on the last advance are enough to pay for the next one. We can define a new term, “affordability”, as what % “profit” you can expect from each advance relative to its cost, telling us whether it becomes relatively easier or harder to continue to advance.

[tossandthrow]

You could argue that there is a capital built up - but even that is difficult as a lot of the knowledge for, eg., building LLMs can not demand rent. Everybody can build their own transformer networks.

> To put it another way, the cost per advancement increases.

This is not true when you don't use capital that demands rent. On the contrary, the cost per advancement is actually decreasing as we develop more knowledge.

LLMs are a cognitive technology (as contrasted to a communication technology). And it will help us tremendously manage knowledge such that you can utilize it better decreasing the cost of advancement.

[RandomLensman]

Whether or not it decreases the costs of advancedment would depend on what is causing advancement to have costs. Some things might be addressable by cognitive technologies, others might not.

If capital doesn't create a return evenutally, why would it invest? (Or did you mean "rent" in the narrow economics definition? But then not sure how that applies here).