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 [...]

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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

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First published:
September 5th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnroTdcCCZoFSXEHy/a-case-that-whole-brain-emulation-research-is-net-harmful-by

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Line graph comparing utility, disutility, and probability curves across brain emulation development stages.

Flowchart: neuroscience to human WBE via partial brain emulation stages.

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“A case that whole brain emulation research is net-harmful by default” by TsviBT

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“A case that whole brain emulation research is net-harmful by default” by TsviBT