Ethical Challenges in AR / VR
Immersive technologies present a series of ethical challenges, that must be taken into account for both developers and end users.
Virtual reality and augmented reality are emerging technologies, with great potential to transform our society, and like any other new technology they can break already established practices. This happened with the internet in the way in which the interaction between people and their sense of privacy changed, and with mobile phones, in how they made all this portable and happen from a device that we carry every day in our pockets.
This blog aims showcase the impact of virtual reality and immersive experiences on individual users and society as a whole, to spark the debate on what AR and VR developers should consider when creating immersive experiences, and how to address issues such as diversity, accessibility, harassment, privacy, social isolation and negative influence on human behavior.
AR and VR
First we are going to define each of these technologies, which although they are similar are not the same.
What is Virtual Reality (VR)?
Virtual reality is a computer-generated simulation of a 3D environment where you can seemingly immerse, navigate, and interact through special hardware, such as a thick headset with handheld sensors. This technology allows the user to immerse themselves and interact in a virtual environment, offering an immersive experience that seeks the abstraction of reality through visual and auditory stimuli.
What is Augmented Reality (AR)?
Augmented reality allows the user to experience a computer-generated simulation of a 3D or 2D environment, which is superimposed on their view of the real world, creating a composite view, allowing to view, through a screen, virtual elements generated in a real physical environment.
Ways in which AR / VR has a positive impact on society
As mentioned previously, AR and VR can have many applications that generate a positive impact on our society, some of them will be described below.
Visualisation
AR is a visualization tool, which allows to bring an object or concept to a reality that would otherwise be inaccessible or difficult to grasp, and it can even help to make the invisible visible. There are some examples, like the one from Case Western Reserve University in which their students use an application called HoloAnatomy to learn with access to the minutest details about the human body in ways not otherwise possible.
Another example is the one from the Dan Marino Foundation which is a virtual job interview training system for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder that helps them to practise in a simulated environment to develop skills and reduce anxiety.
Annotation
AR and VR annotation helps guide people through completing a task, navigating a new environment, or even providing real-time descriptions of what is happening around them.
Microsoft’s Tokyo Project helps visually impaired people to see through AR, AI and HoloLens, using a device that can detect the location of people in the user’s environment and recognize faces, transmitting the information through audio.
Storytelling
AR and VR makes new modes of storytelling and creative expression possible, by introducing new and alternative perspectives that change the way we tell, share, and even remember stories.
One of the best developments for virtual reality has been immersive journalism. Some of the 360 ° video experiences are Over Sidra and Enter the Room, developed to create empathy for children and others caught in the middle of regional conflicts.
Ethical Challenges and Concerns
Immersion technologies can be used in many ways for the benefit of humanity, due to the great advances that have been made in terms of graphics and haptic feedback, which make our interactions in virtual environments increasingly realistic. This can also become a problem when the boundaries between the virtual and physical worlds blur, making VR and AR a medium for violence, escapism, and propaganda, causing serious psychological problems in users. The following are some of the challenges and concerns facing the development of virtual and augmented reality.
Privacy
Privacy is one of the main concerns of contemporary information technology.
Commercial applications introduce new possibilities for targeted advertising, leading to the question whether in virtual environments our real-world movements and gestures, or “motor intentions” and the “kinetic fingerprints” of our unique motion signatures can be tracked, read and exploited by private entities. For these reasons, there must be a dialogue regarding what can and cannot be collected.
Harassment
Social virtual reality will not only provide new ways of engaging people to participate in virtual worlds, but it will also provide malicious people with new opportunities to harness technology for their own purposes. It must be recognized that bullying in virtual reality can become widespread and have a negative emotional impact on users.
Diversity
For virtual and augmented reality experiences to represent diversity, it must be ensured that all people in the world have access to the tools and skills necessary to use them. Although smartphones keep costs low, some devices such as virtual reality headsets maintain high prices, apart from requiring an expensive computer and broadband. For this reason, it is necessary that free or low-cost hardware be developed, to guarantee wide access to the immersive technology ecosystem. It is also necessary to have diverse design teams in the industry to have multiple points of view.
Accessibility
One of the main challenges when implementing virtual reality is the issue of accessibility. recently it has begun to address how to include people with disabilities as users of this technology. Google for example is exploring how to use spatial audio signals to navigate and interact with virtual environments. It is expected that all the investigations that are being carried out in this area will give results in the long term.
Social isolation
There is a great controversy about whether virtual reality is a social isolation, because on the one hand, it takes place within the field of vision of a single user, excluding others from physically participating with them. On the other hand, companies like Facebook have been developing communal meeting places that allow VR users to meet and interact in a virtual social environment, which could prove to be very useful for introverts and loners.
Torture
The power of virtual reality to cause emotions could be used to induce extreme suffering, to the point of being considered torture. Even if these emotions are accompanied by a perception of the general situation, they can be experienced as real. The fact that suffering occurs while immersed in a virtual environment does not mitigate the suffering itself, so that torture in virtual environments is still considered torture.
Criminality
Another major concern and an obvious problem is that users will surely seek virtual reality as a way to cross the red lines with impunity. Some people may find it attractive to spend time in virtual worlds designed to reward illicit or criminal acts. This leads to thinking about whether it should be established that the red lines that should not be crossed in the real world should be the same in virtual reality, which would make virtual reality feel even more real, becoming another problem.
Desensitization
Fully immersing in a virtual reality environment can cause some users to become desensitized in the real world. In fact, virtual reality is used to emotionally desensitize people against phobias. However, without supervised use, desensitization could become a hazard, and negatively affect users. For example, last year, researchers in the United States published the results of a study that found that playing violent video games repeatedly led to decreased emotional sensitivity and a lower capacity for guilt among gamers. Since the immersion in virtual environments can be much greater, it is possible that these effects are more powerful.
Long-Term Immersion
Currently only research has been done on the psychological impact of immersions in virtual environments in short-terms, but once AR VR technology is adapted for personal use, there will be no time limits in which users can spend in their dives. There are several possible risks that may be associated with long-term immersion, including: addiction, agency manipulation, inadvertent psychological changes, mental illness, and a lack of notion of what is authentic.
Embodiment And Lasting Effect
There is evidence that experiences in virtual environments can influence behavioral responses, such as the “Proteus” effect. This effect occurs when people adjust their behavior which others expect to have according to the appearance of their avatar. Studies on this effect have shown that, for example, people who embody tall avatars tend to be more aggressive in negotiations compared to those who embody lower avatars. These types of events are of ethical concern, as they can have a lasting psychological effect on people’s lives when they return to the real world.
Conclusion
Because they are cutting-edge technologies, AR and VR are changing the world and society as we know it, which brings us new opportunities for learning, research, work among others, but also bring new challenges, which we must face and anticipate, to develop new policies and practices that allow us to experience virtual environments or virtual worlds, through safe immersive experiences, with which people can connect and build society instead of destroying it. That is why this blog encourages dialogue and reflection on ethical issues, and related problems that may arise along the way.
