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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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Angle, a relaunched journal from Imperial College London, “focuses on the intersection of science, policy and politics in an evolving and complex world.” The current issue focuses on economies of scale, and includes a short paper of mine on ems:
I focus on two key results related to economies of scale. … First, an em economy grows faster that ours by avoiding the diminishing returns to capital that we suffer because we can’t grow labour fast enough. Second, an economy has larger cities because it avoids the commuting congestion costs that limit our city sizes. (more)
Of course an em economy has many other important scale economies; those where just the two I could explain in the two thousand words given me.
Em Scale Economies
Can you explain why AI researcher-years isn't the right measure? If it will take at most 4 centuries for a relatively small number of biological humans to create AGI, how could it take thousands of subjective years when it's possible to make many copies of the best, most productive AI researchers? Plus, wouldn't the availability of brain emulations to study help speed up AI progress?
While I don't agree AI researcher-years is the relevant measure, I still agree if that AGI "soon" after ems if "soon" means a year or two of objective clock time. But that can be thousands of subjective years to typical ems. So whole civilizations can come and go in that time - LOTS can happen with ems before AGI.