To be honest, it's likely that the why is simply “because we can”. I'm sure there are other advantages—having a fully-functioning brain in a digital realm where

To be honest, it's likely that the why is simply “because we can”. I'm sure there are other advantages—having a fully-functioning brain in a digital realm where you can modify it at will has a myriad of probably psychological and biological research implications. But even if most people asked themselves ethical questions about whether doing that is right etc etc, someone would produce it simply because it is possible. I hate to say “it's in our nature”, but I think there is something (perhaps each other?) that is constantly pushing us to prove that the boundaries others thought were there aren't. And even if we know intellectually that they aren't, we want to manifest the breakdown of those boundaries. So why would someone want to build a human-like intelligence? Because they can.