“A case that whole brain emulation research is net-harmful by default” by TsviBT
“A case that whole brain emulation research is net-harmful by default” by TsviBT  
Podcast: LessWrong (30+ Karma)
Published On: Sat Sep 05 2026
Description: Graphical abstracts Summary A true human whole brain emulation would be very helpful to humanity. The WBE could increase their own intelligence through self-modification and then somehow prevent AGI from killing everyone. However, if a research project made any serious progress towards WBE, it would likely contribute to existential risk from AI by contributing to AI capabilities progress. Here is the argument that a successful WBE research project would accelerate AI capabilities: Creating a WBE is very hard. Therefore, it's very unlikely that a research project, unless extremely well-resourced, could reliably create a WBE very quickly (in less than five years, say). There is a wide spectrum of difficulty within the set of problems building up to WBEs. Some are easy, some are pretty difficult, some are very difficult, some are extremely difficult. Therefore, a project is likely to make some initial progress partway to WBEs, and then to stall and not quickly get all the way to WBEs. Therefore, it's very likely for a WBE project to spend a significant amount of time having already made partial progress, but not being very close to WBEs. If a project makes serious [...] ---Outline:(00:12) Graphical abstracts(00:37) Summary(03:41) Caveats(04:27) Some of the ways this article could be wrong(06:36) Things I'm not saying(09:32) Context: AI capabilities research expropriates any partial understanding of intelligence(10:24) Order-dependency: AGI alignment research passes through partial understanding of intelligence(12:49) What is whole brain emulation research?(16:34) There are many ways to have strictly partial brain emulation(18:36) There will be incremental progress towards WBEs with many stages of partial understanding(20:41) There is a wide spectrum of access difficulty for brains and algorithms(30:16) Filling in gaps with learning creates the capabilities expropriation pipeline(37:24) Avoiding emulating some neural details doesn't make WBEs easy(40:48) Generalizable models of small components would be dangerous PBEs(42:40) A siloed one-shot leap to WBEs is highly implausible(47:20) Getting a powerfully intelligent WBE requires emulating powerful algorithms(49:50) Getting a truly human WBE is probably a very high bar(55:14) Brain elements will be expropriated by AI capabilities even if they haven't been historically(58:30) What to do instead of WBE research --- First published: September 5th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnroTdcCCZoFSXEHy/a-case-that-whole-brain-emulation-research-is-net-harmful-by --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.