Glossary

10.5 Ethical considerations in VR/AR research and development

10 min read•august 19, 2024

Virtual and augmented reality technologies offer incredible potential, but they also raise complex ethical concerns. From privacy and psychological impacts to and content moderation, VR/AR developers face numerous challenges in creating responsible, inclusive experiences.

Ethical frameworks like and virtue ethics can guide decision-making, while governance efforts span industry self-regulation to government oversight. Ultimately, proactive consideration of ethics throughout the innovation process is key to realizing VR/AR's benefits while mitigating risks.

Ethical frameworks for VR/AR

  • Ethical frameworks provide structured approaches for evaluating the moral implications and social impacts of VR/AR technologies
  • Applying established ethical theories to VR/AR helps identify potential benefits, risks, rights, and responsibilities for developers and users
  • Frameworks offer guidance for navigating complex ethical dilemmas and value trade-offs that arise with immersive and persuasive VR/AR experiences

Utilitarianism in VR/AR

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  • Focuses on maximizing overall happiness, well-being, and benefits for the greatest number of people affected by a VR/AR application
  • Weighs potential positive outcomes (education, skills training, social connection) against risks of harm (addiction, manipulation, privacy violations)
  • Challenges include defining and measuring utility, comparing different types of VR/AR impacts, and avoiding sacrificing individual welfare for aggregate gains

Deontology and VR/AR

  • Emphasizes adhering to moral duties, rules, and obligations regardless of outcomes, such as respecting user autonomy, honesty, and fairness
  • Prioritizes protecting individual rights over collective welfare and rejects exploiting or deceiving users even for beneficial aims
  • Raises questions about the fundamental rights of users (privacy, bodily and psychological integrity) and corresponding responsibilities of VR/AR creators

Virtue ethics for VR/AR

  • Evaluates the moral character traits and motivations of VR/AR innovators and how technologies cultivate or undermine human virtues
  • Considers whether VR/AR applications encourage ethical behavior (compassion, generosity) or vices (greed, violence, deception)
  • Highlights the importance of designers' moral integrity and conscience in the face of economic incentives or competitive pressures that could compromise ethics

Privacy concerns with VR/AR

  • VR/AR systems can capture, generate, and analyze vast amounts of highly personal and sensitive data about users' bodies, behaviors, and minds
  • Immersive sensors and analytics enable unprecedented tracking, profiling, and influencing of users across both virtual and physical contexts
  • Privacy risks include data breaches, surveillance, manipulation, discrimination, and erosion of anonymity and control over personal information

Data collection in VR/AR

  • VR/AR devices gather rich streams of biometric (eye tracking, facial expressions), behavioral (gestures, interactions), and contextual (location, social connections) data
  • Sensor fusion techniques can combine multiple data sources to make invasive inferences about users' emotions, intentions, and intimate personal characteristics
  • Ongoing challenges include providing transparency about data practices, minimizing data collection, and securely handling personal information

User tracking and monitoring

  • VR/AR technologies allow continuous, granular monitoring of user actions, attention, and responses within immersive experiences and real-world environments
  • Eye tracking, gaze analysis, and emotion detection enable deep insights into users' interests, preferences, and decision-making processes
  • Pervasive tracking raises concerns about surveillance, profiling, behavior modification, and chilling effects on creative expression and social interaction

Protecting user privacy

  • Privacy safeguards for VR/AR need to address data governance (collection, sharing, retention), user control (consent, access, deletion), and security (encryption, anonymization)
  • Privacy-by-design principles promote data minimization, decentralized architectures, and user-centric data management practices
  • Emerging privacy-enhancing technologies relevant to VR/AR include differential privacy, federated learning, and blockchain-based data trusts and intermediaries

Psychological impacts of VR/AR

  • VR/AR experiences can have profound effects on users' perceptions, emotions, beliefs, and behaviors by simulating highly convincing and intense multisensory stimuli
  • Immersive technologies create new risks of mental manipulation, behavioral addiction, social isolation, and desensitization to violence or anti-social conduct
  • Long-term psychological ramifications of VR/AR are still poorly understood, requiring ongoing research and monitoring to assess cognitive, affective, and behavioral impacts

Emotional manipulation risks

  • VR/AR enables deeply engaging, emotionally compelling experiences that can alter users' feelings and attitudes without their awareness or control
  • -arousing VR/AR simulations can cultivate false memories and trick brains into forming intimate connections with virtual characters or avatars
  • Malicious actors could exploit immersive emotional triggers for deceptive advertising, political propaganda, radicalization, or psychological torture

Addiction and overuse

  • Highly immersive, stimulating, and gamified VR/AR applications have the potential to be addictive, encourage compulsive use, and lead to psychological dependence
  • Excessive VR/AR usage could interfere with real-world responsibilities, relationships, and mental health, particularly for vulnerable youth
  • Developers may be incentivized to maximize engagement at the expense of user well-being, requiring ethical constraints and safety guidelines

Effects on social interaction

  • VR/AR could replace in-person communication with virtual interactions, leading to diminished social skills, isolation, and deterioration of real-world relationships
  • Immersive social environments may expose users to novel forms of harassment, abuse, peer pressure, and anti-social behavior
  • Extensive use of VR/AR avatars and filters could undermine authentic self-representation, exacerbate biases, and breed mistrust in communication

Physical health considerations

  • VR/AR hardware and software interfaces can cause immediate discomfort and injury as well as yet unknown cumulative ergonomic and neurological health impacts
  • Physical risks span from temporary symptoms (eye strain, headaches) to chronic conditions (neck strain, obesity) to traumatic accidents (falls, collisions)
  • Mitigating strategies include hardware design improvements, software safety features (warnings, time limits), and medical research on long-term effects

VR sickness and discomfort

  • Sensory conflicts between visual motion cues in VR/AR displays and physical head/body movements can induce disorientation, nausea, and imbalance
  • Vergence-accommodation mismatch between virtual depth and focal distance contributes to visual discomfort, fatigue, and difficulty focusing
  • Individual susceptibility to VR sickness varies widely and may limit adoption and usage of immersive technologies for significant portions of the population

Repetitive strain injuries

  • Frequent, prolonged use of VR/AR input devices (controllers, gestures) can strain muscles and joints in the hands, arms, shoulders and neck
  • Physically active VR/AR applications may cause overexertion, exhaustion, and musculoskeletal stress and pain, especially with improper form or overuse
  • Ergonomic design of VR/AR systems requires balancing comfortable, natural interactions with exertion limits and recovery, plus user training on healthy practices

Long-term health unknowns

  • Cumulative impacts of regular, extensive VR/AR use on visual, neurological, and metabolic health are still unknown and may take years to manifest
  • Children's health may be especially vulnerable to adverse effects of VR/AR on developing eyes and brains, meriting extra precautions
  • Post-market health monitoring, longitudinal studies, and industry/academic/government cooperation are crucial to proactively identifying and addressing chronic VR/AR health risks

Accessibility and inclusivity

  • VR/AR technologies raise new barriers for equal access and inclusion of diverse user populations across physical, cognitive, and social dimensions
  • Inclusive design of VR/AR must accommodate a wide range of perceptual, motor, and linguistic abilities and address disparities in digital literacy and economic means
  • Proactive integration of accessibility and inclusivity throughout VR/AR development and deployment is an ethical imperative to prevent widening digital divides

Designing for diverse users

  • VR/AR hardware, software, and content must be adaptable and customizable to fit diverse ergonomic needs, abilities, and preferences
  • Inclusive design considerations span visual (color vision deficiency), auditory (caption, signing), mobility (seated play, one-handed use), and cognitive (memory, information processing) accommodations
  • Cultural inclusivity requires offering VR/AR interfaces and experiences in multiple languages and reflecting diversity in avatars, characters, and narratives

Socioeconomic barriers to VR/AR

  • High costs of VR/AR devices and bandwidth requirements risk making immersive technologies accessible only to affluent, digitally connected populations
  • Public and non-profit VR/AR access through schools, libraries, and community centers is critical to ensure VR/AR literacy and participation across socioeconomic strata
  • Affordable, smartphone-based VR/AR approaches can extend access but may offer inferior quality, exacerbating digital divides

Accessibility features and tools

  • Accessibility must be built into VR/AR platforms and tools, including alternative input modalities (speech, eye tracking), output customization (text enlargement, audio description), and difficulty settings
  • Open accessibility standards, cross-platform compatibility, and third-party assistive plugins can expand options for adapting VR/AR to individual needs
  • Accessibility efforts should engage diverse users throughout design processes and provide channels for reporting and resolving accessibility barriers

Content moderation challenges

  • VR/AR platforms must establish and enforce standards for acceptable content and behavior while respecting creative freedom and diversity of expression
  • Immersive, user-generated VR/AR content is difficult to monitor at scale and poses novel forms of potential harms, from violent/hateful speech to disturbing simulations
  • Inconsistent moderation across VR/AR services could allow bad actors to exploit more permissive platforms and create virtual safe havens for toxic content and conduct

Defining acceptable VR/AR content

  • Content policies for VR/AR must define clear boundaries for permissible vs. restricted content that are appropriate to specific user contexts (age, application purpose)
  • Classifying objectionable VR/AR content involves nuanced distinctions in realism, intensity, and interactivity of experiences depicting violence, hate, obscenity, or illegal acts
  • Crafting culturally sensitive and internationally compatible content standards requires multi-stakeholder input and flexibility for local adaptations

Enforcing content guidelines

  • Proactive content moderation in VR/AR requires automated analysis of 3D assets, scenes, and interactions in addition to text, images, and audio
  • Immersive content complicates human moderation due to technological barriers (specialized VR/AR setups) and psychological toll of prolonged exposure to disturbing realistic experiences
  • Limited transparency and accountability of VR/AR content moderation decisions, often made by private actors, risks silencing legitimate speech and concentrating power over public discourse

Balancing free speech vs harm

  • Moderating VR/AR content requires weighing tradeoffs between free speech rights and preventing individual/social harms, which manifest differently in immersive experiences
  • Embodied, interactive nature of VR/AR may justify more stringent restrictions on some forms of speech (threats, harassment) whose impacts are amplified by realism and
  • Navigating speech boundaries in VR/AR requires confronting fundamental questions about how rights and responsibilities should translate in novel experiential media
  • VR/AR experiences can subject users to intense, surprising stimuli with uncertain short and long-term consequences, necessitating robust protocols
  • Obtaining meaningful consent for VR/AR is challenged by lack of user familiarity with immersive risks, persuasive effects of virtual embodiment, and complexities
  • Effective VR/AR consent practices must be tailored to user characteristics (age, VR/AR experience), provide timely disclosures and choices, and balance detail with comprehension

Disclosing VR/AR risks

  • Informed consent for VR/AR should communicate potential physical (discomfort, injury), psychological (distress, manipulation), and privacy (data gathering, sharing) risks
  • Risk disclosures must be specific to the content and features of a VR/AR experience, not just generic warnings, and highlight any lasting effects beyond the immediate interaction
  • Layered disclosure formats (short overviews with links to detailed explanations) can help make VR/AR risk information more digestible and accessible
  • VR/AR consent interfaces should appear natively in immersive environments and allow users to make granular choices about participation, data collection, and experience options
  • Affirmative, opt-in consent for sensitive VR/AR experiences should be required, rather than defaulting to assumed consent with opt-outs
  • Mechanisms to withdraw or modify consent during a VR/AR experience are important to empower users to adjust boundaries based on real-time comfort levels

Protecting vulnerable populations

  • Minors, elderly, and physically/mentally impaired individuals may be especially vulnerable to VR/AR risks and require additional consent safeguards
  • Adapting VR/AR consent processes for child users involves age-appropriate information, parental consent, and limits on data practices and content exposure
  • VR/AR applications targeted at medical patients, students, employees, or public audiences should adhere to domain-specific consent and human subjects research guidelines

Responsible innovation principles

  • Proactive ethical deliberation and value-sensitive design throughout VR/AR development lifecycles is critical to surfacing and mitigating downstream negative impacts
  • Responsible VR/AR innovation involves broadening participation in design decisions, monitoring for unintended consequences, and flexibly updating approaches as contexts evolve
  • Adopting ethically-aligned design frameworks (IEEE, OECD) and conducting regular ethical reviews and risk/benefit assessments can enhance responsible VR/AR innovation

Anticipating unintended consequences

  • Developers should strive to anticipate and preemptively address potential misuses and negative externalities of their VR/AR technologies, not just intended use cases
  • Unintended harms may arise from technological limitations (tracking inaccuracies), malicious actors (hackers, harassers), or social/contextual factors beyond designers' control
  • Scenario planning, threat modeling, and frequent re-assessment of evolving risks throughout VR/AR development and deployment can surface ethical blind spots

Stakeholder engagement and input

  • Responsible VR/AR innovation requires actively seeking and incorporating perspectives of diverse stakeholders potentially impacted by immersive technologies
  • Participatory design methods bring users, community members, policymakers, and ethical experts into VR/AR design processes to better align innovations with societal values
  • Stakeholder engagement should continue beyond initial design through forums for ongoing user feedback, external audits/assessments, and whistleblowing channels

Iterative ethical assessment

  • Ethical evaluation of VR/AR technologies should not be a one-time checkpoint but rather a continuous, iterative process throughout product lifecycles
  • Staging periodic ethical reviews at each phase (conception, prototyping, testing, release, updates) enables identifying and resolving emerging ethical risks
  • Metrics and KPIs for assessing VR/AR ethical alignment should balance quantitative (value-sensitive requirements tests) and qualitative (user interviews) inputs

Governance and regulation

  • Overseeing responsible development of VR/AR requires multi-layered governance spanning industry self-regulation, government policy, and international coordination
  • Regulatory challenges include keeping pace with rapid VR/AR technological change, consistency across jurisdictions, and enforcing controls on decentralized creation and use
  • Effective VR/AR governance requires striking balances between promoting innovation vs. safety and corporate vs. government vs. individual responsibilities

Industry self-regulation efforts

  • VR/AR industry consortia and trade groups are developing self-regulatory initiatives around shared ethical principles, best practices, and content rating systems
  • Individual VR/AR companies institute their own internal ethical review boards, developer guidelines, and content moderation processes to address responsibility gaps
  • Limitations of self-regulation include misaligned incentives, lack of transparency/accountability, and inconsistency that allows bad actors to exploit weak links

Government oversight and laws

  • Governments are exploring legal and regulatory frameworks to oversee VR/AR development, from extending existing laws (privacy, copyright) to creating new VR/AR-specific rules
  • Oversight mechanisms range from mandatory human rights impact assessments for VR/AR companies to regulatory sandboxes for controlled live-testing of new immersive products/features
  • Challenges include avoiding patchworks of conflicting laws across states/countries, preserving speech rights and creativity, and adapting rules to evolving technologies

International cooperation and standards

  • Transnational governance institutions (UN, OECD, IEEE) are developing international ethical standards and principles for responsible stewardship of VR/AR technologies
  • Harmonizing VR/AR standards and regulations across countries is important for supporting global innovation while providing consistent user protections worldwide
  • Multi-stakeholder initiatives bringing together governments, industry, academia, and civil society can help forge international consensus and coordinate enforcement efforts

Key Terms to Review (18)

Accessibility: Accessibility refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. It aims to ensure that everyone, regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities, can access and enjoy experiences, particularly in digital spaces like virtual and augmented reality. This concept is crucial in creating inclusive virtual environments that represent diverse users while addressing ethical concerns in technology development.
ACM Code of Ethics: The ACM Code of Ethics is a set of guidelines developed by the Association for Computing Machinery to help computing professionals navigate ethical dilemmas in their work. It emphasizes the importance of integrity, respect for privacy, and the impact of technology on society, particularly relevant in areas like VR and AR where ethical considerations can profoundly affect users' experiences and safety.
Cultural Appropriation: Cultural appropriation is the act of taking or using elements from one culture by individuals or groups, often without understanding or respecting the original context. This practice can lead to the exploitation and commodification of cultural symbols, traditions, and practices, raising ethical questions about power dynamics, representation, and the impact on marginalized communities.
Data privacy: Data privacy refers to the proper handling, processing, storage, and use of personal information collected from individuals. It encompasses a range of practices and principles aimed at protecting individuals' personal data from unauthorized access, misuse, or exploitation, which is especially important in technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). With the rise of industrial applications and consumer technologies, ensuring data privacy has become critical in maintaining user trust and complying with legal standards.
Deontological Ethics: Deontological ethics is an ethical theory that emphasizes the importance of following rules and duties to determine what is morally right, regardless of the consequences. This perspective holds that certain actions are inherently right or wrong based on moral principles, which can be particularly relevant when considering the ethical implications of virtual and augmented reality technologies in research and development.
Digital divide: The digital divide refers to the gap between individuals who have access to modern information and communication technology and those who do not. This divide can be influenced by factors like socioeconomic status, geographic location, and education level, leading to disparities in opportunities, resources, and social participation in online spaces. Understanding this divide is crucial for fostering inclusive online communities, promoting diverse representation in virtual environments, and addressing ethical issues in technology development.
Digital identity: Digital identity refers to the online representation of an individual or entity, encompassing the data and information that can be used to identify them in the digital space. This includes usernames, profiles, social media accounts, and any digital traces left by user interactions. The management and ethical considerations of digital identity are increasingly important in the context of immersive technologies, as they raise questions about privacy, security, and the authenticity of representations in virtual environments.
Diversity in Design: Diversity in design refers to the inclusion of a wide range of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences in the creation and development of products, services, and experiences. This approach ensures that the resulting designs are more inclusive and better serve the needs of varied user groups, particularly in the context of virtual and augmented reality where users come from diverse cultural, social, and demographic backgrounds.
Empathy: Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings, experiences, and perspectives of another person. It plays a crucial role in creating emotional connections, allowing individuals to perceive situations from another’s viewpoint, which is especially important in immersive experiences like virtual and augmented reality. By fostering empathy, these technologies can enhance user engagement and emotional responses, ultimately influencing the ethical considerations of how these tools are developed and utilized.
Ethnographic study: An ethnographic study is a qualitative research method focused on understanding the cultural practices, beliefs, and behaviors of a group by immersing the researcher in the community being studied. This approach often involves direct observation and participation in the daily life of participants to gather in-depth insights. In the context of virtual and augmented reality, it raises important questions about representation, consent, and ethical considerations related to how participants are portrayed and understood within digital environments.
IEEE VR Ethics Guidelines: The IEEE VR Ethics Guidelines are a set of principles and recommendations aimed at ensuring ethical practices in the development and use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies. These guidelines address various ethical considerations, including user consent, privacy, psychological impact, and accessibility, helping creators navigate the complex moral landscape associated with immersive experiences.
Informed Consent: Informed consent is the process by which individuals voluntarily agree to participate in research or use of technology, after being fully informed of the potential risks, benefits, and implications of their participation. This concept is crucial in ensuring that participants are aware of how their data may be used and stored, particularly in environments that collect sensitive information like VR/AR applications. Additionally, it addresses ethical concerns in research and development, as well as considerations surrounding brain-computer interfaces and neurotechnology.
Moderation policies: Moderation policies are guidelines and rules established to govern user behavior and content management in online platforms, ensuring a safe and respectful environment. These policies are crucial in immersive and virtual reality settings as they address ethical considerations by managing interactions, content creation, and community standards, ultimately protecting users from harmful behavior and misinformation.
Presence: Presence refers to the psychological and emotional state of feeling fully immersed and engaged in a virtual environment as if it were real. This sensation is crucial in virtual reality and immersive experiences, as it allows users to disconnect from their physical surroundings and feel a genuine connection with the digital space.
Psychological safety: Psychological safety is a shared belief that the environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking, where individuals feel comfortable expressing themselves without fear of negative consequences. This concept is crucial in fostering creativity and collaboration, as it allows people to voice ideas, questions, and concerns freely, leading to a more innovative and productive atmosphere.
User feedback analysis: User feedback analysis is the systematic process of collecting, evaluating, and interpreting user responses and interactions within virtual and augmented reality environments. This process helps developers understand how users experience a product, identify usability issues, and gather insights that inform future design improvements. In the context of ethical considerations, it raises questions about privacy, informed consent, and the responsibility developers have toward their users.
Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that suggests the best action is the one that maximizes overall happiness or utility. This principle emphasizes the consequences of actions and considers the greatest good for the greatest number, making it particularly relevant in discussions about technology and its impact on society.
Virtual harm: Virtual harm refers to negative experiences or effects that occur within immersive environments, particularly in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), which can lead to psychological, emotional, or physical distress for users. This concept raises important questions about user safety, consent, and the responsibilities of developers when designing experiences that could potentially cause harm.
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