I've seen 'serious' predictions which peg early WBE around thirty years from now. I am not at all confident that fully-synthetic AGI will be achieved by then.
Well you probably should be, if you think that is a reasonable WBE timescale - since it looks much easier.
WBE takes bioinspiration to an extreme level. Engineers just don't use bioinspiration that much.
Perhaps also check out some other people's estimates of the time to superintelligence.
The WBE advocates mostly seem to consist of neuroscientists who are strugging to stay relevant.
Your links are of depressingly low quality. I've seen the whole brain emulation roadmap report from 2008 floating around here on LW more than once, and it is a far more robust document than what you've presented. I suggest you familiarize yourself with it. (It's worth noting that none of its assumptions have been falsified unlike your Lotus link; and it is also an actual scientifically conducted report, as opposed to either your SEED Magazine or your Lotus page.)
That being said:
...WBE takes bioinspiration to an extreme level. Engineers just don't use bioins
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?