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
- more or less likely to happen,
- more or less likely to be survivable.
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.
Hasn't Eliezer argued at length against ems being safer than AGIs? You should probably look up what he's already written.
Thinking that high-fidelity WBE, magically dropped in our laps, would be a big gain is quite different from thinking that pushing WBE development will make us safer. Many people who have considered these questions buy the first claim, but not the second, since the neuroscience needed for WBE can enable AGI first ("airplanes before ornithopters," etc).
Eliezer has argued that:
1) High-fidelity emulations of specific people give better odds of avoiding existential risk than a distribution over "other AI, Friendly or not."
2) If you push forw... (read more)