De facto, a huge amount of people in silicon valley, and a huge amount of researchers in neuroscience and AI internationally, are doing just that, and with just this motivation, they are just not public about it because they realise talking about things like the control problem and uploading gets you blacklisted in academia, and that they can do the work they need and get the funding they need and the connections they need without getting exposed like that, being careful until they get tenure. I’ve heard it a lot behind closed doors. This is one reason I think Eliezer and Co are much less alone than you realise.
De facto, a huge amount of people in silicon valley, and a huge amount of researchers in neuroscience and AI internationally, are doing just that, and with just this motivation, they are just not public about it because they realise talking about things like the control problem and uploading gets you blacklisted in academia, and that they can do the work they need and get the funding they need and the connections they need without getting exposed like that, being careful until they get tenure. I’ve heard it a lot behind closed doors. This is one reason I think Eliezer and Co are much less alone than you realise.