Because meat isn't magic. Anything that can be computed inside your physical body, can be calculated in an "artificially" constructed replica. Given enough time, we'll create that replica, there's no reason to think otherwise.

> Because meat isn't magic. Anything that can be computed inside your physical body, can be calculated in an "artificially" constructed replica

That is a big assumption and my doubts aren't based on any soul "magic" but on our historical inability to replicate all kinds of natural mechanisms. Instead we create analogs that work differently. We can't make machines that fly like birds but we can make airplanes that fly faster and carry more. Some of this is due to the limits of artificial construction and some of it is due to the differences in our needs driving the design choices.

Meat isn't magic, but it also isn't silicon.

It's possible that our "meat" architecture depends on a low internal latency, low external latency, quantum effects and/or some other biological quirks that simply can't be replicated directly on silicon based chip architectures.

It's also possible they are chaotic systems that can't be replicated and each artificial human brain would require equivalent levels of experience and training in ways that don't make the any more cheaper or available than humans.

It's also possible we have found some sort of local maximum in cognition and even if we can make an artificial human brain, we can't make it any smarter than we are.

There are some good reasons to think it is plausibly possible, but we are simply too far away from doing it to know for sure whether it can be done. It definitely is not a "forgone conclusion".

Even if we grant that for the sake of argument, there are two leaps of faith here:

- That AI as it currently exists is on the right track to creating that replica. Maybe neural networks will plateau before we get close. Maybe the Von Neumann architecture is the limiting factor, and we can only create the replica with a radically different model of computing!

- That we will have enough time. Maybe we'll accomplish it by the end of the decade. Maybe climate change or nuclear war will turn the world into a Mad Max–esque wasteland before we get the chance. Maybe it'll happen in a million years, when humans have evolved into other species. We just don't know!

Haven't we found that there is a limit? Math itself is an abstraction. There is always a conversion process (Turning the real world into a 1 or a 0) that has an error rate. IE 0.000000000000001 is rounded to 0.

Every automation I have seen needs human tuning in order to keep working. The more complicated, the more tuning. This is why self driving cars and voice to text still rely on a human to monitor, and tune.

Meat is magic. And can never be completely recreated artificially.

> Anything that can be computed inside your physical body, can be calculated in an "artificially" constructed replica.

What's hilarious about this argument (besides the fact that it smacks of the map-territory relation fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation) is that for most of my life (53 years), we've been trying not just to simulate a nematode or Drosophila (two of the most-studied creatures of all time- note that we COMPLETELY understand their nervous systems) and failed to create anything remotely convincing of "life" (note that WE are the SOLE judgers of what is "alive", there is no 100% foolproof mechanistic algorithm to detect "life" (look up the cryptobiosis of tardigrades or wood frogs for an extra challenge)... therein lies part of the problem), but we cannot even convincingly simulate a single cell's behavior in any generous span of time (so for example, using a month to compute 10 seconds of a cell's "life"). And yes, there have been projects attempting to do those things this entire time. You should look them up. Tons of promise, zero delivery.

> Given enough time, we'll create that replica, there's no reason to think otherwise.

Note how structurally similar this is to a "God of the gaps" argument (just substitute "materialism-given-unlimited-time" for "God").

And yet... I agree that we should continue to try. I just think we will discover something interesting in... never succeeding, ever... while you will continue to refer to the "materialism-given-unlimited-time of the gaps" argument, assuming (key word there) that it must be successful. Because there can't possibly be anything else going on. LOL. Naive.

(Side note, but related: I couldn't help noticing that most of the AI doomers are materialist atheists.)

It's sort of nice when medical professionals have real emotions and can relate to their patients. A machine emulation won't ever do the same. It will be like a narcissist faking empathy.