Sure, but capital is a rather vacuous word. It basically means “stuff that might be useful for something”. So yes, talking about democratizing AI is a whole lot more meaningful than just saying “y’know, it would be nice if everyone could have more useful stuff that might help em achieve their goals. Man, that’s so deeeep… puff”, which is what your variant ultimately amounts to!
capital is a rather vacuous word. It basically means “stuff that might be useful for something”
Um. Not in economics where it is well-defined. Capital is resources needed for production of value. Your stack of decade-old manga might be useful for something, but it’s not capital. The $20 bill in your wallet isn’t capital either.
Um. Not in economics where it is well-defined. Capital is resources needed for production of value.
While capital is resources needed for production of value, it’s a bit misleading to imply that that’s how it’s “well-defined” “in economics”, since the reader is likely to come away with the impression that capital = resources needed to produce value, even though not all resources needed for production of value are capital. Economics also defines labour & land* as resources needed for production of value.
* And sometimes “entrepreneurship”, but that’s always struck me as a pretty bogus “factor of production” — as economists tacitly admit by omitting it as a variable from their production functions, even though it’s as free to vary as labour.
The way I remember it from my college days was that the inputs for the production of wealth are land, labor and capital (and, as you said, sometimes entrepreneurship is listed, although often this is lumped in with labor). Capital is then defined as wealth used towards the production of additional wealth. This formulation avoids the ambiguity that you identified.
None the less, “capital” and “AI” are extremely different in scope and I see no particular reason to think that if “let’s do X with capital” turns out to be a bad idea then we can rely on “let’s do X with AI” also being a bad idea.
In a hypothetical future where the benefits of AI are so enormous that the rest of the economy can be ignored, perhaps the two kinda coalesce (though I’m not sure it’s entirely clear), but that hypothetical future is also one so different from the past that past failures of “let’s do X with capital” aren’t necessarily a good indication of similar future failure.
Capital is resources needed for production of value.
And that stack of decade-old manga is a resource that might indeed provide value (in the form of continuing enjoyment) to a manga collector. That makes it capital. A $20 bill in my wallet is ultimately a claim on real resources that the central bank commits to honoring, by preserving the value of the currency—that makes it “capital” from a strictly individual perspective (indeed, such claims are often called “financial capital”), although it’s indeed not real “capital” in an economy-wide sense (because any such claim must be offset by a corresponding liability).
Sure, but capital is a rather vacuous word. It basically means “stuff that might be useful for something”. So yes, talking about democratizing AI is a whole lot more meaningful than just saying “y’know, it would be nice if everyone could have more useful stuff that might help em achieve their goals. Man, that’s so deeeep… puff”, which is what your variant ultimately amounts to!
Um. Not in economics where it is well-defined. Capital is resources needed for production of value. Your stack of decade-old manga might be useful for something, but it’s not capital. The $20 bill in your wallet isn’t capital either.
While capital is resources needed for production of value, it’s a bit misleading to imply that that’s how it’s “well-defined” “in economics”, since the reader is likely to come away with the impression that capital = resources needed to produce value, even though not all resources needed for production of value are capital. Economics also defines labour & land* as resources needed for production of value.
* And sometimes “entrepreneurship”, but that’s always struck me as a pretty bogus “factor of production” — as economists tacitly admit by omitting it as a variable from their production functions, even though it’s as free to vary as labour.
Sure, but that’s all Econ 101 territory and LW isn’t really a good place to get some education in economics :-/
The way I remember it from my college days was that the inputs for the production of wealth are land, labor and capital (and, as you said, sometimes entrepreneurship is listed, although often this is lumped in with labor). Capital is then defined as wealth used towards the production of additional wealth. This formulation avoids the ambiguity that you identified.
None the less, “capital” and “AI” are extremely different in scope and I see no particular reason to think that if “let’s do X with capital” turns out to be a bad idea then we can rely on “let’s do X with AI” also being a bad idea.
In a hypothetical future where the benefits of AI are so enormous that the rest of the economy can be ignored, perhaps the two kinda coalesce (though I’m not sure it’s entirely clear), but that hypothetical future is also one so different from the past that past failures of “let’s do X with capital” aren’t necessarily a good indication of similar future failure.
And that stack of decade-old manga is a resource that might indeed provide value (in the form of continuing enjoyment) to a manga collector. That makes it capital. A $20 bill in my wallet is ultimately a claim on real resources that the central bank commits to honoring, by preserving the value of the currency—that makes it “capital” from a strictly individual perspective (indeed, such claims are often called “financial capital”), although it’s indeed not real “capital” in an economy-wide sense (because any such claim must be offset by a corresponding liability).
Sigh. You can, of course, define any word any way you like it, but I have my doubts about the usefulness of such endeavours. Go read).