In view of all this, working toward stable whole-brain emulation of a a trusted and highly intelligent person concerned about human well being seems to me like a more promising strategy of reducing existential risk at the present time than researching Friendly AI.

The current situation is that good old-fashioned software engineering has revolutionised the financial markets, saving the world billions of dollars of bad investments, revolutionised the world of information storage and retreival, helping people to have accurate views of the world, revolutionised the world of forecasting, and created an international marketplace of huge proportions, vastly increasing the extent to which nations depend on each other, and so minimising the chance of armed conflict.

By contrast, emulating brains has been a practically useless approach, hardly responsible for anything of interest. The high-profile flagship products in the area are literally useless, they do nothing - except flash pretty lights in peoples' eyes - funding via hypnosis.

"Whole-brain emulation" seems likely to continue to be useless for a looooong time. The whole approach seems based on wishful thinking to me. It seems to be an example of the type of thinking that you get if you fail to consult with the likely timelines on a project.