Developing whole-brain emulation (WBE) technology would provide immense benefits across neuroscience, biomedicine, artificial intelligence, and robotics. At this time, constructing a simulated human brain lacks feasibility due to limited experimental data and limited computational resources. However, I suggest that progress towards this goal might be accelerated by working towards an intermediate objective, namely insect brain emulation (IBE). More specifically, this would entail creating biologically realistic simulations of entire insect nervous systems along with more approximate simulations of non-neuronal insect physiology to make "virtual insects." I argue that this is realistically achievable within the next 25-50 years. I propose that developing emulations of insect brains will galvanize the global community of scientists, businesspeople, and policymakers towards pursuing the loftier goal of emulating the human brain. By demonstrating that WBE is possible via IBE, simulating  the human brain will no longer be viewed as too radically ambitious to deserve substantial funding and resources. This shift may facilitate a URLanized push towards human WBE, making the goal potentially reachable during the 21st century. By implementing IBE , large-scale scientific infrastructure may shift towards developing more WBEs and move in the direction of comprehensively understanding neural computation .
Developing whole-brain emulation (WBE) technology would provide immense benefits across neuroscience, biomedicine, artificial intelligence, and robotics. At this time, constructing a simulated human brain lacks feasibility due to limited experimental data and limited computational resources. However, I suggest that progress towards this goal might be accelerated by working towards an intermediate objective, namely insect brain emulation (IBE). More specifically, this would entail creating biologically realistic simulations of entire insect nervous systems along with more approximate simulations of non-neuronal insect physiology to make "virtual insects." I argue that this could be realistically achievable within the next 20 years. I propose that developing emulations of insect brains will galvanize the global community of scientists, businesspeople, and policymakers towards pursuing the loftier goal of emulating the human brain. By demonstrating that WBE is possible via IBE, simulating mammalian brains and eventually the human brain may no longer be viewed as too radically ambitious to deserve substantial funding and resources. Furthermore, IBE will facilitate dramatic advances in cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and robotics through studies performed using virtual insects .
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This shift may facilitate a URLanized push towards human WBE, making the goal potentially reachable during the 21st century. By implementing IBE , large-scale scientific infrastructure may shift towards developing more WBEs and move in the direction of comprehensively understanding neural computation
Furthermore, IBE will facilitate dramatic advances in cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and robotics through studies performed using virtual insects