Ethical challenges in AR/VR
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have been with us for more than we think and it is not as recent as we think
“The origin of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) came way back in 1838, when Charles Wheatstone invented the stereoscope. This technology used an image for each eye to create a 3D image for the viewer. 1”
Even though development on these technologies has been done for some years back, it has not been since a few years back that it has really made an impact in the tech scene, due to the fact that the hardware has become smaller and cheaper thru the years making it more portable, more realistic and less expensive to produce as well as to market them.
This has led to multiple companies to start exploring the different uses of this technology in diverse sectors such as education, entertainment, health, and industry among others. Being that its possible applications are so vast we now have all types of companies not just big tech companies, involved in the development of products but also thousands of start-ups entering the market with their product may that be hardware or software for the multiple gear sets offered today.
With competition between content and hardware creators, accessible prices and a variety of products it has become more common to have some sort of access to Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality or Mixed Reality technologies and with situations such as 2020’s pandemic “consumer spending on reality technologies is projected to reach $7 billion, and distribution and services spending on the technologies could reach $4.4 billion.2”, we get closer to the idea that it may soon be a part of every household or company which has or plans to adopt it, to allow better interaction between costumers, products and employees during this bizarre and for the time being, new reality.
But with the increasing expansion of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, there come some issues that will and have to be addressed as there is the possibility for abuse in the case of privacy and data collection, harassment, social isolation, and others that we will be discussing along the way.
Privacy and Data Collection
One of the most talked-about issues is Privacy and data collection, which is a part of the data protection area that deals with the proper handling of data.
“This includes how data should be collected, stored, and shared with any third parties, as well as compliance with the applicable privacy laws.3”
With this type of new immersive technologies, privacy is a big concern as it provides a platform for collecting information “that to date has not generally been collected, certainly not in any broad-scale. 4”.
There are new types of information that companies will be able to collect, for example, we can customize our avatar for the virtual world to mirror our real-world allowing for our movements and gestures, “Motor intentions” and “kinetic fingerprints” to be tracked, read and used by all sort of entities for their own benefit.
With the use of VR technologies, user psychological responses to certain environments such as eye movement or heart rates can be exploited for economic benefit as it would be valuable information for consumer research. This information could be used by companies or even authorities to analyze employee’s or citizen’s physiological “well-being” without their authorization and used to fire or red-flag any of them.
Real VS Virtual world
With time both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality have made huge leaps in their development as mentioned before, this has allowed them to achieve levels of realism that are closer to real-world experiences. This has been called hyperrealism and it has brought to us virtual experiences that feel very real.
This has brought some questions related to social isolation. Even though developers are creating not just single-player experiences but like in the case of Facebook “have been busy inventing communal meeting places like Spaces, which help VR users meet and interact in a virtual social environment.” The question still lingers how it could affect extreme immersion into these spaces, especially as the main users, such as it happens now with console games, are mostly teenagers.
It has been argued how can these virtual forums, detach users from their real-life “Studies have already demonstrated that our existing social media consumption is making many of us feel socially isolated, as well as guilty and depressed.”
In the use of game consoles, it has been common to find people totally absorbed by video games, spending most of the time playing and not interacting in the real world and having their mothers, girlfriends, and even wife’s fighting for attention against a piece of microprocessors and plastics.
Psychological impact
One topic that worries is the dangers in psychological effects even though there is not enough that yet, there are several aspects experts are worried about, one of them being “depersonalization,” “which can result in a user believing their own physical body is an avatar.”
As mentioned before due to the hyperrealism Virtual Reality offers there is a worry that in gaming for example the experience could lead to real-life post-traumatic disorders or even desensitization. Desensitization can be more troublesome in younger users who have less real-life experience but will be exposed to virtual ones that are far from everyday normality. What are the consequences of a young user playing a Virtual Reality game where a character has no respect for his counterparts what are going to be his views on gender, race, and even respect to animals?
Another point to take into account is the use that Virtual reality can have in the medical fields, doctors can treat patients with phobias for example in a very realistic but controlled environment, but what will happen if users are confronted with worst fears without any supervision for example in a game, what could be the outcome both physically and psychological of that experience is yet to be fully researched and documented
Conclusions
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are here to stay, their development has come in huge leaps of advancement.
It has provided an entirely new and exotic frontier that couldn’t be explored before. It has created jobs, and uses that can help most of society by implementing its use in industries like medicine, where it is has become a powerful tool to treat certain patient’s conditions like phobias and post-traumatic disorders among others in a new and more effective way than before. It has helped to educate youngsters and adults alike by transporting them to Africa, Asia, the Amazon, or back in time to ancient worlds allowing for education to be as dynamic and interactive as it has ever been. It allows doctors, engineers, firefighters, and many more to train in the most realistic sceneries, but without the actual dangers, to be prepared for when their skills are required.
But like any new emerging technologies, there are unchartered ethical and legal territories that have to be explored. A lot of information is going to be collected that wasn’t been collected before and who knows who is going to be storing our data and what use it is going to have, and imagine if it was hacked? It will not be just a credit card or social network password.
Also, continuing research has to be done to further understand the phycological impact of Virtual Reality usage, both in children, teenagers, and people who will be presented with situations that they are not prepared without the proper professional guidance when confronting those fears.
Like any new technologies, there is still a lot to learn but the prospects of what Virtual and Augmented Reality can offer are limitless.
