[wladimir]

Cells certainly have a kind of independent existence (consciousness is a different matter...). But our body needs its cells. It's not simulating cells in another substrate.

The 'cells' in the case of the hypothetical technological singularity will be computer hardware, not organic cells or human brains. There is the tacit assumption that silicon-based AI tech is somehow superior to our own carbon-based 'tech' and will displace it.

Human brains forming into a kind of super-organism would be a different phenomenon. It wouldn't even need AI, or much more advanced technology. It could indeed be argued that this is the case already with the internet and even printing press before it.

[TeMPOraL]

> There is the tacit assumption that silicon-based AI tech is somehow superior to our own carbon-based 'tech' and will displace it.

I doubt it's superior or will replace carbon-based tech (no quotes here; biology is but nanotechnology that was not made by us), but there are two particular improvements introducing human-designed technology could bring:

- electrical signals in the brain run at 200Hz; minds could in principle work much faster, were they made of something different

- human-designed technology is easier to modify, reprogram and adapt (mostly becasue we built it, so we know how to do it); the idea is that a mind built with it could be made to be able to rewrite/rebuild itself, with luck launching into recursive improvement loop, where a mind redesigns itself to be better, which then goes on to improve itself more, etc.