I have considered doing this for similar reasons, but the logistics of managing API keys, passwords, and other sensitive forms of information have always made me reluctant to pull the trigger. Have you found a workflow that lets you maintain a reasonable amount of opsec?

Did Hinton explain why the idea of uploading a mind is ridiculous and would never work? I didn't hear a refutation.

Mortal computers sound fascinating, and, in light of transistor sizes reaching fundamental limits, are certainly a technology tree worth trying. But unless costs are several orders of magnitude lower than their silicon-based counterparts, I don't see broad applicability. 

You're sacrificing immense generalizability and universality for a one-off, opaque black-box that may or may not do what you want. Contrast that with pre-trained, essentially immortal models in-silica - wouldn't the duplicability of such a model outweigh any perceived economic benefit? I struggle to find a single use case that a traditional model wouldn't do better and (over the long term) cheaper.