If you were a utilitarian, then why would you want to risk creating an AGI that had the potential to be an existential risk, when you could eliminate all suffering with the advent of WBE...
You are not the only agent in the world, so these considerations have no impact. Others will work towards creating UFAIs out of ignorance, and as WBEs will be doing the same faster.
That's why I wrote this:
Or is it that AGI is more likely to come before WBE and so we should focus our efforts on making sure that the AGI is friendly?
Isn't is strange that the people smart enough to build AGI would be stupid enough not to even TRY to make sure it's friendly? I'm not saying that strange things don't happen, but they to me it seems like they would have a lower probability. I mean, the one of the goals of SIAI is to make sure that anybody who would have the means to create WBE would know about the risks involved. But who are the people ...
If you were a utilitarian, then why would you want to risk creating an AGI that had the potential to be an existential risk, when you could eliminate all suffering with the advent of WBE (whole brain emulation) and hence virtual reality (or digital alteration of your source code) and hence utopia? Wouldn't you want to try to prevent AI research and just promote WBE research? Or is it that AGI is more likely to come before WBE and so we should focus our efforts on making sure that the AGI is friendly? Or maybe uploading isn't possible for technological or philosophical reasons (substrate dependence)?
Is there a link to a discussion on this that I'm missing out on?