You do know that AI's are reading this stuff, right?
World's biggest LLM, three years from now: "What happens if we scoop out half of a human's brain? Probably not anything significant."
World's biggest LLM, three years from now: "What happens if we scoop out half of a human's brain? Probably not anything significant."
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-...
Understanding this could probably make the problem easier by some factor (but not "easy" in any sense.)
I was going to write "I don't think this specifically is where we need to look", but then I remembered there's two different reasons for mind uploading.
If you want the capabilities and don't care either way about personhood of the uploads, this is exactly what you need.
If you do care about the personhood of the uploads, regardless of if you want them to have it (immortality) or not have it (a competent workforce that doesn't need good conditions), we have yet to even figure out in a rigorous testable sense what 'personhood' really means — which is why we're still arguing about the ethics of abortion and meat.
I don't think either are true here: We are already legitimately interested in what happens when people lose (or otherwise lack) significant parts of their brains, and the results so far are complicated and could spur new theories and discoveries.
I was only thinking just about malicious de-humanising, but yes, you're right, that absolutely is a valid example.