Apparently it's also common to not include uploads in the definition of AI. For example, here's Eliezer:
Perhaps we would rather take some other route than AI to smarter-than-human intelligence
- say, augment humans instead? To pick one extreme example, suppose the one says: The prospect of AI makes me nervous. I would rather that, before any AI is developed, individual humans are scanned into computers, neuron by neuron, and then upgraded, slowly but surely, until they are super-smart; and that is the ground on which humanity should confront the challenge of superintelligence.
Yeah, there's a distinction between things targeting a broad audience, where people describe WBE as a form of AI, versus some "inside baseball" talk in which it is used to contrast against WBE.
Why does SI/LW focus so much on AI-FOOM disaster, with apparently much less concern for things like
Why, for example, is lukeprog's strategy sequence titled "AI Risk and Opportunity", instead of "The Singularity, Risks and Opportunities"? Doesn't it seem strange to assume that both the risks and opportunities must be AI related, before the analysis even begins? Given our current state of knowledge, I don't see how we can make such conclusions with any confidence even after a thorough analysis.
SI/LW sometimes gives the impression of being a doomsday cult, and it would help if we didn't concentrate so much on a particular doomsday scenario. (Are there any doomsday cults that say "doom is probably coming, we're not sure how but here are some likely possibilities"?)