Shulman & Salamon, Whole brain emulation as a platform for creating safe AGI.
Shulman, Whole brain emulation and the evolution of superorganisms
The stuff Carl & Nick have been passing back and forth recently. (I suspect you've seen this, Stuart?)
The post-Summit2011 workshop report I wish I had more time to write.
Also (shameless plug) Sotala & Valpola, Coalescing Minds: Brain uploading-related group mind scenarios.
I would expect exocortex-based approaches to uploading (as discussed in the paper) to come earlier than uploads based on destructive scanning: exocortexes could be installed in living humans, and are a natural outgrowth of various brain prosthetic technologies that are already being developed for medical purposes. There's going to be stigma, but far less stigma than in the thought of cutting apart a dead person's brain and scanning it to a purely VR e...
At the FHI, we are currently working on a project around whole brain emulations (WBE), or uploads. One important question is if getting to whole brain emulations first would make subsequent AGI creation
If you have any opinions or ideas on this, please submit them here. No need to present an organised overall argument; we'll be doing that. What would help most is any unusual suggestion, that we might not have thought of, for how WBE would affect AGI.
EDIT: Many thanks to everyone who suggested ideas here, they've been taken under consideration.