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RichardKennaway comments on Rationality Power Tools - Less Wrong
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Huh, I got the opposite impression - that the timeline for brain emulation was less uncertain than the timeline for AI. Our brain-scanning capacity is getting better and better, and once the resolution is high enough to get individual neurons and their connections, we can "just" make a computer model of that, run it, et voila, you got brain emulation!
There are some difficulties, but these seem to require less of a conceptual breakthrough than AI or (especially) FAI do. It's possible that some of it is technically impossible (maybe we can't get the resolution needed to track individual dendrites), or that some bits of neuron interaction are trickier than we thought.
Some simple organisms have had their entire brains completely mapped, yet as far as I know, no-one has done a whole-brain emulation of them. If anyone knows to the contrary I'd be interested in a reference, but if not, why not? If someone thinks they know how such a system works, then building a working model is the obvious test to perform.
Having something mapped is not the same thing as knowing how it works.
Quite, but the comment I was replying to spoke only of mapping individual neurons and their connections. This has been done, and presumably a lot is known about what they do. But it appears not to be enough. In view of that, what will it really take to do a whole human brain emulation? Until it has been demonstrated in, say, C. elegans, it is so much moonshine.
I'm not convinced that anyone actually did any work towards the nematode upload project. Who would fund it? I did hear recently the claim that it was tried and failed, but I haven't seen any evidence. ETA: at Nick's link, David says that there hasn't been any work since 2001. The work I saw from 2001 looked just like a proposal. He also mentions (at github) a paper from 2005 that is relevant, but not, I think, simulation.
Just because Markram isn't doing the obvious thing doesn't mean he is a fraud. Funding agencies and journalists aren't suspicious, so there's no incentive to work on non-sexy projects. It should make you nervous that he might fool himself, but he might not; he certainly believes he has other checks.
I heard a rumor that there has been renewed interest in the nematode upload project, but I don't have a reference. ETA: this was probably what Nick links to.
David Dalrymple is beginning a project. (github)
A lot, I expect, and yes. And I expect all sorts of difficulties to work through in the first attempts (giving rise to both ethical and existential difficulties).