Artificial intelligence by mimicking natural intelligence

Connectomics, behavioural cloning, lo-fi and hi-fi whole-brain emulation

I had a chance to watch this seminar series and workshop from the Foresight Institute on Whole-Brain Emulation (WBE) as a path to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). WBE is definitely out there. There are, however, some fascinating ideas I wanted to cover here. This is going to be a bit more speculative than what I usually cover, but I want to leave some breathing room for big ideas. The idea behind WBE is appealingly simple: if you can simulate a human brain in silico in excruciating detail, you’ve got an AGI. Simulate it faster, fix the “bugs” (e.g. lower plasticity in later adulthood)…

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• Julian Quevedo

related reading

• Whole Brain Emulation: No Progress on C. elegans After 10 Years — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Whole Brain Emulation: No Progress on C. elegans After 10 Years — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Using Artificial Intelligence to Augment Human Intelligencedistill.pub
• The Future of Whole Brain Emulationpsymedventures.substack.com
• AI to Interpret Your Mindjonathanxu.com
• Connectomics seems great from an AI x-risk perspective — AI Alignment Forumalignmentforum.org
• Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmapgwern.net
• What If We Had Bigger Brains? Imagining Minds beyond Ours-Stephen Wolfram Writingswritings.stephenwolfram.com
• Building Brains on a Computerpress.asimov.com
• The case for emulating insect brains using anatomical “wiring diagrams” equipped with biophysical models of neuronal activitylogancollinsblog.files.wordpress.com
• Neurotechnology is Critical for AI Alignmentmilan.cvitkovic.net
• State of Brain Emulation Report 2025 | Research Overviewbrainemulation.mxschons.com