WBE is a potential technology to generate software intelligence that is human-aligned simply by being based directly on human brains. Generally past discussions have assumed a fairly long timeline to WBE, while past AGI timelines had broad uncertainty. There were also concerns that the neuroscience of WBE might boost AGI capability development without helping safety, although no consensus did develop. Recently many people have updated their AGI timelines towards earlier development, raising safety concerns. That has led some people to consider whether WBE development could be significantly speeded up, producing a differential technology development re-ordering of technology arrival that might lessen the risk of unaligned AGI by the presence of aligned software intelligence. 

Whether this is a viable strategy depends on
(1) AGI timelines not being ultra-short
(2) whether WBE development can be speeded up significantly by a concerted effort, (3) this speedup doesn’t introduce other risks or ethical concerns. 

The goals of this workshop is to try to
(A) review the current state of the art in WBE related technology
(B) outline plausible development paths and necessary steps for full WBE
(C) determine whether there is potential for speeding up WBE development
(D) whether there are strategic, risk or ethical issues speaking against this