Ethical Challenges in AR / VR
Throughout the course of human history there have been many technilogical breakthoughs that changed the way that we communicate and live our lives. The invention of the printing press transformed our ability to rapidly spread information and ideas around the world. Later on the creation of the telephone cut the wait time out of long distance communication. The arrival of the internet gave everyone instant access to information, and connected people around the world in real time. This eventually lead to the cell phone, which in a sense combined these previous technologies all into one! Over the past decade we’ve seen the emergence of new forms of technology that have the potential to leave a mark as large as the ones that came before. These new technologies are Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR).
Virtual Reality is an immersive simulation of reality in which the surrounding world is completely replaced with a computer generated world. This is achieved using a headset that completely fills the users field of view in combination with body tracking to map the players body into the virtual world. Some popular examples include the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and the Vavle Index. Augmented Reality combines aspects of virtual reality with the real world around you in a way that enhances the real world experience. This can be done with a headset that allows you to see through or a modified pair of glasses, such as Google Glass, or Microsoft Hololens. So what makes augmented and virtual reality so special? They allow our computer programs to escape the confines of two-dimensional space (or at least that’s how it seems).
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These technologies have exploded in popularity in recent years, in both the consumer and commercial world. In 2014 the number of virtual reality users worldwide was in the hundreds of thousands, but that number soared to over 280 million users in 2019. The market for virtual reality is currently valued at over 6 billion, and this figure is expected to rise to over 20 billion in the next five years. There was no way that anyone in the past could have predicted this, but is seems like the COVID 19 pandemic has speed up the rise of these devices even more. Virtual reality allows people to communicate in a much more intimate way with their friends and family during the quarentine.
As these technologies progress they have the potential to produce incredible experiences and improve the quality and efficiency of our lives, but they may also come with some challenges. In a broad sense many of the advancements of the past have been a double edged sword. The printing press allowed us to rapidly store and spread ideas, but in the long term diminished our need, and in turn, our ability to memorize and repeat large amounts of information. The instant access to information granted by the combination of cell phones and the internet takes this phenomenon a step further. When information is always quickly accessible, we are significantly less incentivized to memorize it. These trade offs are not necessarily a bad thing, but each one makes us more reliant on our technology. What will the tradeoff be with AR/VR?
One of the big areas of ethical concerns surrounding augmented reality and virtual reality is privacy. These devices are capable of collecting a massive amount of information from you and your home. A lot of this information is significantly more intimate than the information normally shared with tech companies, such as 3D scans of you and your enviornment. This problem is likely to get worse as the technology improves. People have expressed concern over the privacy agreements that some of the big VR hardware manufacturers have with their customers. The privacy policy for the Oculus Rift says that they have the right to “…use, copy, display, store, adapt, publicly perform and distribute…content for their services.” It is likely that many of the consumers purchasing these devices are unaware that they have consented to these terms. The combination of monitoring your body language, and potentially facial expression, during social interactions could prove to be extremely valuable information. There will also be privacy issues from real life that bleed over into the virtual world. Things like illegally recording someone without their consent will be significantly easier than in real life. As the virtual world gets closer and closer to reality, the lines will become blurry on what laws extend into the digital realm.
By far the most fascinating aspect of virtual reality is its ability to affect people on a psychological and behavioral level. This is something that really sets virtual reality apart from other forms of technology. Some studies have shown that VR is capable of breaking implicit bias, which is usually a very difficult task. In one study on implicit racial bias, participants who embodied a black avatar in the virtual world scored significantly lower on implicit racial bias than a control group. People also seem to be more likely to take on the behaviors of the avatars that they embody in the virtual world. For example, a study showed that people who embody an elderly avatar are more likely to save for retirement in real life. These studies show some pretty powerful shifts in perspective and behavior that have the ability to effect peoples lives long term. There is also a lot of evidence that virtual reality can be used to effectively treat many different behavioral and psychological issues. The headset allows therapists to quickly and easily create environments that can be used for things like exposure therapy. This aspect of virtual reality holds a lot of promise for helping people, but it also has the potential to cause harm. Instead of VR being used to help break implicit bias, it can be used to enforce them or even create new ones. The same thing applies to people taking on behaviors of their avatar. If these behaviors are positive there isn’t a problem, but if they are negative it has the potential to be very bad. This can be especially concerning when it comes to the possibility of influencing the world view of children. Some studies looking at the efficacy of teaching students in virtual reality show some pretty promising results. Students are more engaged in the learning experience and show increases in the ability to recall the information they learned when using virtual reality. This is great news for the future of education, but it also means that virtual reality can be a powerful tool to spread misinformation as well. There is still a lot more work that needs to be done before we have a full understanding of how this technology effects us, but it’s an issue that shouldn’t be ignored.
There are some issues that have not yet manifest, but have the potential to show up if the technology continues to advance. One of these possibilities is that if virtual reality becomes popular and immersive enough, people will start to prefer virtual experiences over real life experiences. Virtual reality would not only let you experience just about any real life experience, it will also allow you to experience things far beyond what is capable in real life. It is easy to see how this could turn into a problem for some people. This could also lead to people dealing with issues related to social isolation, unless the virtual experiences are able to truly satisfy those needs. I think of this issue as more of a philosophical question. When virtual reality reaches a point comparable to reality, are real life experiences intrinsically more valuable than virtual ones?
What it really comes down to with the majority of these issues is the fact that we just don’t know how exactly these technologies are going to impact us, both on an individual and societal level. Virtual reality and augmented reality are distinctly different from past technology, so we have no choice but to figure things out as we go. The studies mentioned show that virtual reality in particular can have some surprising effects on our mind, but we are still unsure about the severity these effects. Do these changes to cognition and behavior last forever, or are they just temporary?
Despite these potential issues, the futures of augmented and virtual reality are very exciting. The current iteration of this technology is just the beginning. If the current trends continue, the hardware will continue to improve and the price will come down, making these devices accessible to a much larger group of people. If some simple steps are taken, it seems that most of the potential problems mentioned can be avoided. Developers need to be mindful of the potential impact the experiences they make can have on the user. Hardware manufacturers should try to limit the amount of information that they are gathering from their users, or at the very least make sure that they are fully aware of what they agree to.
Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgXEZ4klOn0
https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2018/4/vr-and-ar-the-ethical-challenges-ahead
https://technologyandsociety.org/virtual-reality-ethical-challenges-and-dangers/
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