I don’t think we need exact neuron emulation to simulate human consciousness. We just need to work out the information theory behind it.

We currently have a good idea about how neurons behave, but to simulate them properly we also need to know how they work. I’m sure we can figure that stuff out, eventually. Give it a couple of decades or centuries and we’ll know enough to properly simulate neurons, if not just for finding cures to diseases. From that point on it’s just a matter of reducing the complexity and scaling the simulation.

We’ve figured out how to make robots walk by first making exact copies of animals and people, and then once we got that to work we reduced the whole thing down to a relatively simple machine that’s getting better by the year. I’m sure we’ll be able to apply the same pattern to neurons once we figure them out.

Scientists are already working on simulating the complete brain of a small insect with a miniscule brain. It takes just about a supercomputer to run that thing in real-time, but it’s not finished yet.

With the way technology is headed, I do wonder whether we’ll get a cyborg singularity before or after we manage to simulate consciousness. Either seem possible, so I think it just comes down to what kind of technology gets invented first. With Musk still paralysing monkeys in his lab, I don’t think we’re close to either option today.