Which movies get artificial intelligence right?
news.sciencemag.org
news.sciencemag.org
On what grounds would it be nonsense? Such an approach would "simply" (in quotes because - while the theory is simple - we're a long ways away from a simple implementation) require saving the current execution state of a brain to some sort of medium and recreating that state in another system. I reckon this to be conceptually similar to the concept of "hibernation" in modern computers; during hibernation, the operating system saves the contents of its virtual memory (physical plus any swapped/paged memory) to non-volatile storage, then reloads that saved state on the next boot.
We're obviously a long way from having nearly enough understanding of the brain to be able to pull this off, but I have a hard time equating it to "nonsense" or "pure speculation" when a conceptual analogue exists. Remarks like that of Stuart Russell tend to be grounded on some assumption that humans are somehow distinct from other computing machines in how they operate. I generally take that assumption with a sufficiently-large grain of salt to pull itself into hydrostatic equilibrium, clear its orbital neighborhood, and be declared by the IAU to be a planet.