Could an AI Be Immortal? - Issue 86: Energy

Consider Data, the android from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Suppose he finds himself on a hostile planet, surrounded by aliens that are just about to dismantle him. In a last-ditch effort to survive, he quickly uploads his artificial brain onto the Enterprise computer. And could he, at least in principle, do this every time he's in a crisis, so that he'd be immortal? It is common to assume that an AI could achieve immortality by creating backup copies of itself and thus transfer its consciousness from one computer to the next.