The technological struggles are in some ways beside the point. The financial bet on artificial general intelligence is so big that failure could cause a depression.
I see this line of thinking as more useful as a thought experiment than as something we should actually do. Yes, we can theoretically map out a human brain and simulate it in extremely high detail. That’s probably both inefficient and unnecessary. What it does do is get us past the idea that it’s impossible to make a computer that can think like a human. Without relying on some kind of supernatural soul, there must be some theoretical way we could do this. We just need to know how without simulating individual atoms.
I see this line of thinking as more useful as a thought experiment than as something we should actually do. Yes, we can theoretically map out a human brain and simulate it in extremely high detail. That’s probably both inefficient and unnecessary. What it does do is get us past the idea that it’s impossible to make a computer that can think like a human. Without relying on some kind of supernatural soul, there must be some theoretical way we could do this. We just need to know how without simulating individual atoms.