> I do not believe that there is anything magical about humans that prevents us from eventually reverse engineering ourselves.

Nothing except a possibly unmanageable level of complexity. We don’t even really understand how LLMs do what they do.

Perhaps we can build an AI model that has an understanding of humans down to the level of detail being contemplated here, but that won’t mean we will understand that.

And even with that understanding, it doesn’t mean it’ll be possible to build a fully functioning human body without the equivalent of a brain. It’s likely to be more like a person in a vegetative state - they have a brain and measurable brain function, but no higher cognitive functions that we can detect.