Whole brain emulation as a P.R. exercise is a pretty stomach-churing idea from my perspective—but that does seem to be what is happening.
People like Kurzweil (who doesn’t think that WBE will come first) may talk about it in the context of “we will merge with the machines, they won’t be an alien outgroup” as a P.R. exercise to make AI less scary. Some people also talk about whole brain emulation as an easy-to-explain loose upper bound on AI difficulty. But people like Robin Hanson who argue that WBE will come first do not give any indications of being engaged in PR, aside from their disagreement with you on the difficulty of theoretical advances in AI and so forth.
For W.B.E. P.R. I was mostly thinking of I.B.M. - though they say they have different motives (besides W.B.E., I mean).
Robin Hanson is an oddity—from my perspective. He wrote an early paper on the topic, and perhaps his views got anchored long ago.
The thing I notice about Hanson’s involvement is that he uses uploads to argue for the continued relevance of economics and marketplaces—and other material he has invested in. In the type of not-so-competitive future envisaged by others, economics will still be relevant—but not in quite the same way.
Anyway, Robin Hanson being interested in uploads-first counts in their favour—because of who Robin Hanson is. However, it isn’t so big a point in their favour that it overcomes all the uploads-first crazyness and implausibility.
People like Kurzweil (who doesn’t think that WBE will come first) may talk about it in the context of “we will merge with the machines, they won’t be an alien outgroup” as a P.R. exercise to make AI less scary. Some people also talk about whole brain emulation as an easy-to-explain loose upper bound on AI difficulty. But people like Robin Hanson who argue that WBE will come first do not give any indications of being engaged in PR, aside from their disagreement with you on the difficulty of theoretical advances in AI and so forth.
For W.B.E. P.R. I was mostly thinking of I.B.M. - though they say they have different motives (besides W.B.E., I mean).
Robin Hanson is an oddity—from my perspective. He wrote an early paper on the topic, and perhaps his views got anchored long ago.
The thing I notice about Hanson’s involvement is that he uses uploads to argue for the continued relevance of economics and marketplaces—and other material he has invested in. In the type of not-so-competitive future envisaged by others, economics will still be relevant—but not in quite the same way.
Anyway, Robin Hanson being interested in uploads-first counts in their favour—because of who Robin Hanson is. However, it isn’t so big a point in their favour that it overcomes all the uploads-first crazyness and implausibility.