I think your “digital people lead to AI” argument is spot on, and basically invalidates the entire approach. I think getting whole brain emulation working before AGI is such a longshot that the main effect of investing in it is advancing AI capabilities faster.
I definitely think it’s an (the most?) important argument against. Some of this comes down to your views on timelines which I don’t really want to litigate here.
I guess I don’t know how much research leading to digital people is likely to advance AI capabilities. A lot of the early work was of course inspired by biology, but it seems like not much has come of it recently. And it seems to me that we can focus on the research needed to emulate the brain, and try not to understand it in too much detail.
Could we just...keep the WBE research secret? It’d make it harder, but if having detailed knowledge of how the brain works openly available is dangerous, then, it seems like if you can keep the research closed, that mitigates that risk.
I think your “digital people lead to AI” argument is spot on, and basically invalidates the entire approach. I think getting whole brain emulation working before AGI is such a longshot that the main effect of investing in it is advancing AI capabilities faster.
Strong agree, see for example my post Randal Koene on brain understanding before whole brain emulation
I definitely think it’s an (the most?) important argument against. Some of this comes down to your views on timelines which I don’t really want to litigate here.
I guess I don’t know how much research leading to digital people is likely to advance AI capabilities. A lot of the early work was of course inspired by biology, but it seems like not much has come of it recently. And it seems to me that we can focus on the research needed to emulate the brain, and try not to understand it in too much detail.
Could we just...keep the WBE research secret? It’d make it harder, but if having detailed knowledge of how the brain works openly available is dangerous, then, it seems like if you can keep the research closed, that mitigates that risk.