That is, would we in some sense manage to survive, in the longer term? Presumably we would have to maintain the physical substrate we are running on, by providing power and cooling, and by eventually replacing our hardware.
I think this question could help to answer whether AGI as common defined (“all cognitive labour”) would be the same as or different from what would be required by Vitalik Buterin’s definition:
“AGI” is AI powerful enough that, if one day all humans suddenly disappeared, and the AI was uploaded into robot bodies, it would be able to independently continue civilization.
I think that in a scenario where we’re given plenty of time and/or information about the robot bodies we now occupy, definitely yes.
If they wear out or break down or require maintenance or energy sources that we know little about, or if civilization breaks down due to the transition and we can’t supply the requirements anymore, or if it’s inscrutable alien technology that we simply won’t have the capability to understand even after hundreds of years of study, then quite probably not.
Basically it would be a race to overcome the individual and civilizational shock of the transition and get to self-sustenance before too many people die.
The “one day” wording in Buterin’s definition implies a very different scenario from “tomorrow”. The former suggests time for infrastructure and knowledge to be developed, and for AI entities to be familiar with robot bodies including their maintenance and creation.
A lot depends on the specifics of the scenario (for both AI and human-upload cases). I don’t know anyone who thinks that there’s anything important (for survival) that humans do which can’t theoretically be done by an electro-mechanical device.
So in theory, upload/AGI would be about as self-sustaining as biological entities (which is: rather fragile, and don’t have enough track record at scales that stress the ecosystem to know whether we are).
Presumably, the robots are a little more rational than humans in terms of how they maintain and replenish their resources, and how they ration themselves (aka: each other) to stay within bounds of current sustainability. So, even more unknown, but plausibly more sustainable than biological humans.