The question of whether we’ll be uploading our consciousness to a computer is no longer if. It’s probably when. That’s because these digital consciousnesses – our essences – will likely be the product of an AI’s interpretation of ourselves. The breadcrumbs we’ll leave across digital files, images, videos, audio recordings, and, of course, all that social media will be an ample resource to reconstruct you.
Just having a digital archive of yourself is kind of cool. Future historians (if there are any) will love that, too.
One of my happy imaginings is that perhaps someday my AI simulant will be in a museum somewhere getting to chat with whatever entities descend from us to compare and contrast how things are now with how they are whenever that is.