The FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator and Crisis-Relief System: What if global scale computing facilities were available that could analyse most of the data available in the world? What insights could scientists gain about the way society functions? What new laws of nature would be revealed? Could society discover a more sustainable way of living? Developing planetary scale computing facilities that could deliver answers to such questions is the long term goal of FuturICT. This initiative is seeking to develop Information and Communications Technologies that will provide scientists, governmental officials and citizens with a planetary scale computer which is called a Living Earth Platform. The Living Earth Platform will provide the means of analysing data and managing complex events. It could for example provide a basis for predicting natural disasters, or managing and responding to man-made disasters that cross national borders or even continents. The intention is to undertake interdisciplinary research, involving domains such as complexity, computer and the social sciences, to address the scientific challenges associated with the realisation of this goal and the needed advances in Information and Communication Technologies. Prof. Steven Bishop
This is the team responsible for simulating the rat cortical column.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110308/full/news.2011.143.htm
The team is one of 6 that is being considered for at least 2 "FET Flagship" positions, which comes with all that funding. Each of the six competing teams is proposing to work on some kind of futuristic technology:http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/6pilots_en.html
Of course, word on the street is that academic neuroscientists don't think much of the project:
I think trying to influence the committee's decision potentially represents very low hanging fruit in politics as charity.
Even if academic neuroscientists don't think much of the project in its current state, it seems likely that $1.4 billion would end up attracting a lot of talent to this problem, and get us the first upload significantly sooner.
It's true that Less Wrong doesn't have a consensus position on whether to speed development of cell modeling and brain scanning technology or not. But I think if we have a discussion and a vote, we're significantly more likely than the committee to come up with the right decision for humanity. As far as I can tell, the committee will essentially be choosing at random. It shouldn't be hard for us to beat that.
Edit: But that's not to say that our estimate should be quick and dirty. In the spirit of holding off on proposing solutions, I discourage anyone from taking a firm public position on this topic for now.
In terms of avenues for influence, here are a few ideas off the top of my head:
We, and the folks at the Future of Humanity Institute, SI, and other groups, seem to spend a lot of time thinking about what would happen in the ideal scenario in terms of the order in which technologies are developed and how they are deployed. I think there is a good case for also investing in the complementary good of trying to actually influence the world towards a more ideal scenario.