You can accept that the brain is governed by physical laws, without conceding that the brain can be simulated. Emulation on the atomic level may not be computationally feasible. The emergence of human behaviour from a less detailed simulation is not guaranteed. These possibilities are discussed under the heading “Scale separation” in the roadmap to whole brain emulation published by the Future of Humanity Institute [1].

> At first it may appear unlikely that a complex system with many degrees of freedom like the brain could be modelled with the right causal dynamics, but without taking into account the smallest parts … However, state variables of complex systems can be quantitatively predicted when there is ‘scale separation’: when different aspects of the system exist on sufficiently (orders of magnitude) different scales (of size, energy, time etc), they can become uncoupled … [an] example is the scale separation between electric currents and logic operations in a computer …

> When there is no scale separation (such as in fluid turbulence) macroscale predictions become impossible without simulating the entire microscale. An important issue to be determined is whether such a cut‐off exists in the case of the human brain … if it could be demonstrated that there is no such scale, it would demonstrate the infeasibility of whole brain emulation.

The FHI is assuming scale invariance in order to test it experimentally. We shouldn’t assume it for the purpose of analysing the roles played by humans and AI under IP legislation.

[1]: https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf