Standard Caveat - Even though this essay appears on the SAG website it is represented as solely the opinion of Mike Deering, and is not endorsed by the SAG organization or the individual members of the SAG Board of Directors. It is the policy of the SAG to present a diversity of opinion on the Singularity.
Uploading is the process of changing the material substrate of your mind from the biological neuron based architecture to a computer transistor based architecture. The biological substrate is evolutionarily designed. The computer substrate is intelligently designed.
There are several different approaches to accomplish this feat. All of them involve scanning your biological substrate and making a functionally accurate computer software substrate with all of the information in the original. In order to make an accurate functional copy it may be necessary to scan and duplicate the entire biological body. There are a lot of interrelated processing functions built into the body which you would want for greatest accuracy. Although, you could get the vast majority of your mind by just scanning your brain. It just depends on how accurate you want the copy to be. Let's assume the best possible copy. You would need to place this virtual you in a fully interactive fully detailed virtual environment for it's proper functioning. If this virtual you were completely accurate it would have all of the physical aches and pains of the original. If the original had a heart attack fifteen minutes after scanning then the virtual you should have the same heart attack, even including death. The big improvement of the virtual you is that making design changes to it should be theoretically easier. After mature nanotechnology this distinction may be moot.
The two basic approaches to uploading are:
Method One - we passively scan the biological you and make a computer you. Now we have two of you. We can delete the original and call the process a success. End result, the virtual you has the subjective experience of having moved from the biological substrate to the computer substrate. But this is not acceptable to most people. Alternatively, we can establish communication between all parts of the two yous so that your subjective experience is that you are simultaneously inhabiting both substrates and let you handle deleting the original, seeing as being indefinitely tied to the original biological substrate would completely invalidate the reasons for uploading in the first place. End result, the virtual you has the subjective experience of having moved from the biological substrate to the computer substrate.
Method Two - we gradually scan and replace your biological substrate with the computer substrate. The end result is the same as method one.
Many people feel squeamish about this uploading stuff. It brings up several interesting questions such as "what are we?" "Why are we afraid to upload?" After a long process of elimination which I won't repeat here (unless you want me to) I think the question of what we are can be summed up as a pattern of information. We know from our experience with computers that patterns of information can be copied, stored and edited, and in the case of a program be run multiple times and places with varying inputs. We are not used to thinking of these processes as applying to us. Our problem with them comes from two sources, survival instinct and our unitary experience of consciousness. Our survival instinct is evolutionarily programmed. This individual pattern wants to continue to exist. That's part of the information in the pattern. If we made five copies of the pattern, each copy individually would want to continue to exist. The fact that an identical pattern continued to exist may be comforting, but does not completely satisfy the desire for survival. This information is certainly editable, so you could theoretically change it. The second source of our unease is our unitary experience of consciousness. If our consciousness were not unitary but multiple perhaps we would be less apprehensive about losing one or two of them as long as others continued. But this can not be. Consciousness is necessarily unitary. If there were two parts of me that were not aware of each other they would each experience consciousness unitarily. If they were aware of each other the part that was aware of both would form a bridge between them unifying their conscious experience. This is not something we can edit out. It's topology. It's mathematics. It's a fundamental characteristic of consciousness. Therefore it seems that some form of continuity of conscious experience is necessary for a successful uploading procedure. As long as this individual pattern of information exists, regardless of the transformations it goes through, then I will continue to exist.
NIGHTMARE UPLOAD SCENARIO
You walk into an uploader's lab. He motions for you to step into the booth. Inside you experience a strange tinglely electrostatic sensation not only over the surface of your body but throughout the interior, that lasts about ten seconds. After you step out the
technician directs you to a monitor that shows you staring out of the screen like looking into a mirror. You see the lab behind the other you furnished as the one you occupy. But unlike a mirror, you shift your head to the left just as he shifts his head to the right. You
both notice the difference then notice the expression on the other's face indicating this knowledge. Then it finally hits you, there are two yous. Then you both turn to your respective technicians and simultaneously ask. "So, can I store him for now and run him later?" His technician says, "Sure." While yours says, "I doubt it."
Singularity Action Group website frames version.