“Uploading”, besides referring to the transfer of data from a computer to a larger network, has a meaning in transhumanism and science fiction - the hypothesized transfer of a human mind to a computer. For casual functionalists, who see cognitive activity as a dynamic pattern, operating by virtue of the way the parts of the brain interact with each other rather than by virtue of their particular substrate, this possibility is not so far-fetched. For others, vitalists such as John Searle, our intelligence and identity is irremovably connected to our biological brains, or the fact that our brains are made of proteins, or the fact that we are human beings - the specifics aren’t exactly clear.
How would uploading work? It would require very advanced technology - nanobots to scan our brains in high detail, massively broadband data links to forward that information to a high-capacity storage medium, and a sophisticated virtual environment for our uploaded brains to live in. Also desirable would be some means of reversing the transfer should the person become discontent with being uploaded.
A commonly described scenario for uploading is the Moravec transfer - proposed by robotics maverick Hans Moravec - where organic neurons are progressively replaced by neuron-sized robots that perfectly simulate the input/output streams of neurons. Because the fake neurons would behave in exactly the same way as the neurons they replaced, you would never lose consciousness, and your neural processing - memories, motivations, etc., would be the same as if your brain were still organic. The end result would be an entirely inorganic brain composed of robotics only. From there it would be a short step to putting all that dynamic data-processing into a futuristic computer and integrating it with a virtual environment.
Vitalists say that rather than transferring the mind to a computer, this would merely result in the destruction of a human being and the creation of something else entirely. But with an incremental process like the Moravec transfer, who’s to say at which point the person stopped being “them” and started being a fake replacement? With all the same memories and sense of identity, it’s highly plausible that the upload would claim to be the same person, and we would believe them. The virtual environment could come along with a virtual body for the uploaded brain to inhabit, and if the virtual environment were sufficiently similar to the environment of origin, most people could never tell the difference.
What are the potential benefits of uploading?
1. Uploads could live as long as the computer that contains them operates. If that computer began to degenerate, they could be transferred to yet another - indefinitely. This would be a sophisticated form of life extension that goes far beyond visions of genetic or cybernetic reengineering.
2. Uploads would only consume as much power as the computers that implement them, their virtual bodies and environments. With reversible computing, this could be made arbitrarily small, perhaps approaching an energy cost of zero. (Though matter will always be required to implement the computations.)
3. Virtual environments would be remarkably flexible for uploads - some environments might give their occupants almost complete control over their surroundings. Objects or scenarios could be conjured into existence at will. Because the context would be virtual and entirely reprogrammable, the laws of physics need not apply to the simulation layer - only to the computational layer implementing it.
4. The ability to share data between minds at speeds and bandwidths impossible for meat-creatures.
And that’s only a few!
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