---
id: ai-memory-palaces-and-superdidactic-ai/06-the-far-end-uploads-distillation-and-the
title: 'AI memory palaces and superdidactic AI: 6. The far end: uploads, distillation
  and the "soul"'
report: https://ai.hiina.space/reports/ai-memory-palaces-and-superdidactic-ai.md
section: 6
version: 1
updated: '2026-10-27'
author: Hiina
---

Index of everything on this site: https://ai.hiina.space/index.md

# AI memory palaces and superdidactic AI: 6. The far end: uploads, distillation and the "soul"

- Section 6 of 9 of the report "AI memory palaces and superdidactic AI" by Hiina (v1, updated 2026-10-27)
- Report overview and contents: https://ai.hiina.space/reports/ai-memory-palaces-and-superdidactic-ai.md
- Previous: https://ai.hiina.space/reports/ai-memory-palaces-and-superdidactic-ai/05-anki-for-what-you-ought-to-do.md
- Next: https://ai.hiina.space/reports/ai-memory-palaces-and-superdidactic-ai/07-five-things-to-build.md

## 6. The far end: uploads, distillation and the "soul"

The chain from "distill me" to "upload me" has two links that come apart: "distill a person into a narrow task policy" is an empirical question with 50 years of evidence behind it, while "upload the brain" and "is the result you" are open science and open philosophy.

### Emulation is nowhere close

The [State of Brain Emulation Report 2025](https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15745v3) (Zanichelli, Schons, Freeman, Shiu, Arkhipov) gives no mouse or human timeline. It says whole-brain single-neuron recording in mammals will likely stay extremely hard for the foreseeable future. Structure is ahead of dynamics:

| Milestone | Scale | Note |
| --- | --- | --- |
| [FlyWire](https://earth.com/news/first-complete-map-of-every-neuron-in-the-brain-revealed) whole adult fly brain (2024) | 139,255 neurons, \~50M connections | \~33 person-years of proofreading |
| [Shiu et al. connectome model](https://ls.berkeley.edu/node/1426) (2024) | same, on a laptop | predicted taste and touch responses only |
| [MICrONS](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-map-unprecedented-detail-connections-visual-perception-mouse-brain) (2025) | 1 mm³ mouse cortex, >524M synapses | 1.6 PB, 7+ years |
| Mouse recording today ([report](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15745v2)) | \~1M neurons, \~1% of brain | 100M is the next-decade goal |
| Mouse connectome cost ([E11 Bio, quoting Wellcome](https://e11.bio/news/roadmap)) | $7–21B, >95% proofreading | E11 targets 100x cheaper; a target, not a result |

Even the 302-neuron worm isn't emulated: in *C. elegans* 40–50% of synapses differ worm to worm, no simulation includes neuropeptides, and the report estimates \~8,400 worms' recordings would be needed against 284 today. A human connectome at 10 nm is 2–2.8 zettabytes of raw data.

### The cheap route already exists, and it is "distillation"

The nearest real thing to "distill an upload to what's in distribution for my project work" is **judgmental bootstrapping**. [Dawes 1979](https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/dawes/the-robust-beauty-of-improper-linear-models-in-decision-making.pdf) summarizes it: linear models of 26 of 29 clinical judges beat the judges themselves (validity .31 vs .28), and models of admissions faculty beat the faculty (.25 vs .19). The model keeps the judge's stable policy and drops their day-to-day noise. The sting is that equal-weight models did about as well, so the judge's real contribution was choosing which variables matter and in which direction.

LLM-era versions measure attitudes, not work. [Park et al.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10109v1) agents built from 2-hour interviews match people's GSS answers at 83–86% of their own two-week test-retest consistency (74% from demographics alone), but show no gain on economic games. [Twin-2K-500](https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17479) twins reach 88% of human test-retest yet are "more rational" than people: 4% of twins refuse a vaccine in an omission-bias item against \~45% of humans. Individual [Maia chess models](https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.10086v2) predict a specific player's moves well enough to identify them. I found no evaluation of an LLM clone of someone's professional judgment.

So what's "in distribution" for one person's project work is probably small: which features they attend to, which direction they lean on each, their taste vetoes, and their stated goals. A builder's own decision-queue answers are exactly that training set. That suggests a concrete test (build 3 in section 7): how often can a model predict the builder's queue answer from the item alone?

### Is the distillate you?

No major position says a narrow task policy is the self. My reading of each view applied to a "work-only distillate":

- **Functionalism** ([Chalmers 1995](https://consc.net/papers/qualia.html), fading and dancing qualia): a faithful upload could be conscious, but a distillate drops most of the organization, so it is a different, smaller system.
- **Parfit** ([SEP summary](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/)): identity isn't what matters; psychological continuity is. A work distillate carries a thin slice of it. This is the view friendliest to the distillation framing, and it still says "some of what matters", not "the soul".
- **Copy views** ([Schneider, *Artificial You*](https://archive.philosophersmag.com/artificial-you-ai-and-the-future-of-your-mind-by-susan-schneider-a-review/)): even a full upload is a distinct individual.
- **Substrate views** ([Searle](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/); [Seth 2025](https://sussex.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Conscious_artificial_intelligence_and_biological_naturalism/28649519); IIT per [Koch](https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/10/02/171077/what-it-will-take-for-computers-to-be-conscious/)): a digital simulation is a model of a person's outputs, not a subject. Seth and Koch leave room for brain-like or neuromorphic hardware.
- **[Hanson, *The Age of Em*](https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/ageofem)**: copied, job-trained ems are the economic case, and he doesn't need identity settled.

The bootstrapping result cuts against "the soul is what silicon runs better": what transfers and improves is the policy, and it improves precisely by discarding the variability that makes someone a person on a given day.

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