I was invited to participate on panel on Metaverse Ethics at Gamesbeat’s Into the Metaverse 2 summit on January 26, 2022. Privacy in XR was the biggest theme and open question that each of the panelists focused on. This is a recording of the discussion that just aired, which was moderated by Kate Edwards (CEO of Geogrify), and featured Micaela Mantegna (Affiliate at Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University), Jules Urbach (CEO of Otoy), and Kent Bye (Voices of VR podcast).
Here’s a pretty comprehensive write-up of the Ethics of the Metaverse session by Dean Takahashi.
LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
Here’s a talk that I gave earlier in 2021 about the state of XR privacy and neurorights, which also gives an overview of this as an issue:
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. So I was invited by Dean Takahashi to participate on a panel about ethics within the metaverse, an overall conference that they're having with GamesBeat called Into the Metaverse 2. So I was on this panel with the moderator, Kate Edwards. She's the CEO of Geography and Executive Director of Global Game Jam. Michaela Mantegna, who's an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet Society, and then Jules Urbach, who's the CEO of OE2OI. We're talking about metaverse ethics, and we ended up focusing quite a bit on privacy and some of the open questions around privacy within the metaverse. This is airing just after after the official livestream premiere of this panel discussion. I just wanted to be able to make this conversation out to a broader audience just because I think there's a lot of open questions that are discussed here. When I wake up in the morning and I think about all the different issues that are unresolved within the future of XR and whatever ends up becoming the metaverse, these issues around privacy and ethics are the ones that are at the top of my mind. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of a severe podcast So this panel with Kate Michaela Jules myself was recorded on January 14th 2022 and aired on January 26th 2022 so with that let's go ahead and dive right in
[00:01:26.100] Kate Edwards: Hi, everyone. My name is Kate Edwards, and I am the CEO of Geography and also the executive director of the Global Game Jam. And I'd like to welcome you to the Ethics of the Metaverse panel. I'd like to kick this off by having our esteemed panelists introduce themselves. So why don't we start with you, Kent?
[00:01:42.147] Kent Bye: Yeah, my name is Kent Bye. I do the Voices of VR podcast. And so since May of 2014, I've recorded over 1600 interviews and published over a thousand. And ethics is something that has come up quite a lot, specifically around the concerns around privacy and just general ethical frameworks around XR.
[00:01:59.360] Micaela Mantegna: Hi, Kate. Hi, Ken. Hi, Jules. Nice to meet you all. And thank you for having me. I'm Miquela Montegna. I'm based in Argentina. I'm an affiliate at the Red Mankind Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where I lead the video game policy working group. And I have been working and doing research on artificial intelligence ethics for a bit around. and so excited to have this conversation about the metaverse.
[00:02:23.174] Jules Urbach: Hi, everyone. I'm Jules Roeback. I am the CEO and founder of Otoy and also founder of the Vendor Network. And metaverse, that's a huge important point for me as well. I mean, our mission at Otoy is to help build an open metaverse.
[00:02:37.184] Kate Edwards: Absolutely. Well, yeah, this is a very big topic and we do not have a lot of time to discuss it. So as people can imagine, talking about ethics in any context is a large topic. Talking about them in the metaverse and the emergent ethics that we're going to be thinking about there can be potentially even bigger. So I think just for the sake of focus, why don't we start with the first issue and I'd like to put out to you all is what would you consider to be the top or most critical issue to address in relation to ethics in the metaverse? Because we could go in all kinds of directions, but what do you think is the biggest issue that we need to address?
[00:03:10.758] Kent Bye: Yeah, I'll maybe start off just by saying that for me, I think that the issues around privacy and the data that are going to be made available by these systems that on one hand you need that data in order for the systems to work, but then there's these questions around the context around then where does that data go and how is it being used? Because we can live into a situation where we have all this really intimate biometric and physiological data that is being radiated from our bodies, captured by this technology, and start to undermine what Rafael Yusta and the Morningstar Group has identified as these fundamental neural rights. So our right to identity, our right to mental privacy, our right to agency are some of the things that are really being threatened. Depending on where that data are going, it could start to create the situation where they're essentially reading our minds, modeling our identity really fine grained and contextually, and then nudging our behaviors to the point where it's undermining our intentional actions and ability to make decisions without being influenced by all these external influences from this data that's super intimate.
[00:04:08.637] Jules Urbach: I would add that my particular concern is around eye tracking, which is obviously something that a lot of AR devices are going to be able to do and can do. That in particular reminds me of when advertisers would do eye tracking to see on text copies how people would react to the words. Eye tracking was really a map of somebody's mind and intent. It also is something that when you think about how, on a web browser, even how you move a mouse can be used to identify you. So my concern is things like that that can be used to infer intent, even subconscious intent, that should be controlled by the owner. And it shouldn't be something that gets turned into an advertising cue. And also, it shouldn't be used for tracking. So even when you externalize things in the metaverse and you're looking at how some of these eyes are moving in the VR space outside of the goggles, you can still build a digital figure, which is like you can fingerprint walking and other things. So those things all need to be protected. And users should have the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, all the things that we've seen in pre-metaverse states should be preserved going forward, you know, in the metaverse.
[00:05:03.919] Micaela Mantegna: For me, and to add what already Schultz and Kent said, which I agree, is that at some point we are talking about the metaverse, but still we are debating what the metaverse is. There are not really a consensus about the term. So one of the current definitions is like this iteration of internet and social networks and gaming coming into these conversions. And this also translates, well, the problems were already known about social media, about the internet governance and about particularly artificial intelligence ethics. What Ken was refining about the data that is currently the fuel of the artificial intelligence and autonomous systems has already been very troublesome in the ethical background. I wrote a paper about a framework on how we delve into these items from awareness to the final impact on society. A lot of these items and dimensions could be translated into the metaverse. It's a problem of magnitude, where we are seeing a more immersive layer of immersiveness, if that's a correct term. I'm a native Spanish speaker, so my English could be a bit off. But at the same time, the thing is that, as was Ken saying, a lot of this data is being taken out of our bodies in a very unconscious way. So we are not able to prevent that. So the problems that we already know, the rights we already conquered in talking about artificial intelligence ethics and talking about human rights on the internet, we should translate it into the conversation of the metaverse.
[00:06:31.592] Kate Edwards: No, all great points. What I'm hearing then is that really what we're talking about is privacy overall. I mean, that's one of the biggest concerns that we have. I mean, it's certainly been a concern already in our common internet usage and use of other devices. So it's a pretty strong theme that even the public at large is very attuned to, I believe, even though we still give up our data and our location readily, playing Pokemon Go and all kinds of other fun stuff. So, I know you mentioned a couple of examples of the privacy concerns. Is there anything else, or more specifically, dealing with the privacy issue? Like, for example, Jules, you mentioned eye tracking as one particular issue, like being able to track people's and keep a record of what people are looking at. Are there other things along those lines, like specific technologies or metadata that we are concerned about when it comes to privacy?
[00:07:16.665] Jules Urbach: I was going to say that the feedback that bothers me a lot, where if you understand subconsciously what somebody's thinking and doing before they do, and then you provide some sort of ad or something in the metaverse or something in their view that is meant to trigger that to then trigger them to buy something, which is what you're seeing, frankly, on ads on social media, I'm very concerned about that being a thousand times worse when you have, you know, this kind of eye tracking and this data and then feeding that back in and using it. So, it's more than just having the data dox you or expose your privacy. It's also having it weaponized against you that I'm deeply concerned about.
[00:07:44.005] Kent Bye: Yeah, I was just going to say that there is a sensor fusion of all these things that are coming together. Data that's coming from our body, but it's also things like brain control interfaces and the neural data, eventually being able to potentially decode our thoughts. So our thoughts, our ideas, but also our actions and what we're doing. And these technologies are aware of our context. And I think there's a paradigm shift that needs to happen between thinking about privacy in terms of our identity. It's something that's a static immutable object because all the laws are defining whether or not that information that gets out is going to be able to identify us, which I think is a concern. But Britton Heller has come up with this concept of biometric psychography, meaning that there's going to be certain information that's revealing the parts of our character that's going to be contextually relevant in terms of what our likes or dislikes are. And so when you start to have contextually relevant AI on top of all this interfusion, you're able to model your actions, your behaviours, your emotional reactions, your physiological reactions to things, things that you can't even control. It's all this unconscious level So they're modeling our identity to the point that is going to start to get to this point where, you know, kind of sleepwalking into this dystopia, I think. And there's not a clear way, I think, legally to start to define what these contexts are and what is appropriate or not appropriate. Kind of Niesenbaum's contextual integrity approach of saying that there's an appropriate flow of information. And so there's a paternalistic approach that says you should never use any of this data or it should only be excluded to medical applications. But there's a lot of applications from an entertainment perspective that you need that data. And so how do you draw the line between the contextual relevance and the use and appropriate use of that data in that entertainment context versus all these other ways in which that, you know, it's kind of like the dialectic between it gives you all these amazing capabilities, you know, give you the, you know, the last bastion of privacy, or it could sort of create the worst surveillance technology that we've ever seen.
[00:09:23.974] Micaela Mantegna: To quote the very wise Uncle Ben from Spider-Man, with great powers comes great responsibility. We are heading into a world where neurotechnology is going to be able As you were talking, Rafael Schuster and the proponents of new rights are talking about that, but not only being able to decode information from our brains, but only to implant or manipulate what is going inside. And in their paper, they're talking about invasive and non-invasive methods of operation, which I think is something inherent for medicine. But we should be maybe talking about external and internal devices. Because it could be a wrong thought that external devices are non-invasive. What we are talking about, brain-computer interfaces, is that they could be really, really particularly invasive of our mental privacy and agency. It's like the dystopian nightmares come true. But again, We are talking about this as something in the future, but this is something that we already have been seeing with generative artificial intelligence. That's why I like to talk about a thing about magnitudes, because this is going to become worse for sure. But we already have generative artificial intelligence, and we already have artificial intelligence creating inferences about us, siphoning our data. So the thing is that not only we have to think about these interfaces, but the algorithms that are governing the brain computer interfaces, because the problems that we already know about bias, about transparency, about efficiency, are going to be ingrained in this new technology. It's not only the capabilities, but the technology that is going to power them is already here. So my concern is, how are we going to shape these and move it forward to the metaverse?
[00:10:59.692] Kate Edwards: Well, it's interesting because I mean, obviously, we're talking and touching upon the idea of data ownership, you know, that's been a long discussed topic in the world of the internet and tech. But this broader concept of personal sovereignty that you have over your information about and not just your information, it's basically like to Ken's point, you all touched on this. is to the actual modeling of you and the modeling of your identity in a digital space. I'm wondering, then, what level of ethical responsibility the companies, the platforms, are going to have over allowing that personal sovereignty. To that end, I'm wondering, is there anything that exists now in terms of existing regimes of internet governance? There's all kinds of different regimes around regulating privacy data and all these other things on the internet as it exists now, do you think those different regimes of governance are going to be leveraged in the metaverse? Is that something that we can build upon or do you see that already happening or where does that stand?
[00:11:53.426] Micaela Mantegna: I was going to say from the legal standpoint that we have an interesting class here because you have something that is universal and global and decentralized like the internet, but the territorial nature of the law makes it sometimes that you cannot govern what is happening with the regulations. And we are trying to create artificial barriers through regulations like the GDPR. But one of the interesting things about how the GDPR treats data, that it gives you access to your data or the logical way that artificial intelligence deals with your data, but not to the inferences that are being created about you, which is something that also accompanies in our flow of information and goes and travels with ourselves while we are browsing the web. And we don't have access to that. And from that point, it's very interesting that we are seeing the centralized models being applied based on Web3 and blockchain technologies, platforms like Kleros, where people is trying to crowdsource methods of dispute resolution. But the thing is that we have to go to another level and think that if we are in a open metaverse space, the rules are more of this like, but if we are going into a place where the metaverse is more like a private owned company, like the models we see with social media, there is a very strong push to have a stronger consumer law protection to make a more believable and actionable protection for the people using this, because you are at the prey of the terms and conditions of the platform otherwise.
[00:13:18.593] Jules Urbach: Yeah, I mean, I was going to say that we do have, you know, at least the open web, there's a mechanism of seeing how this might work in the document object format model before it goes into 3D space in the metaverse. And you're right in the sense that we do have cookie trackers and Europe did influence other parts of the world with that privacy law. Even you have erasure requests, we get those even at Otoy for our subscribers. This is all good, but you're absolutely right. If you have AI that's being trained on all that data, and even if the data goes away, the AI is still trained on it. That's really important. We should have it so that that data, you have opt-in rights to have that data be used for AI training. That would help. Then I also think that to the other point, too, you don't want to have an app side or vertical, if you're putting it in Metaverse, the open web. At least you're dealing with the same underlying system, so you can put up cookies. You understand the mechanism by which things are working. And my concern is that if you just have a vertical platform that is like, you know, one browser, one app, I mean, that's not great. So we should try to go back to the open web model for the open metaverse. And if we miss that, I think that's going to be bad. Secondly, we do have decentralization, crypto payments. So even those kinds of things, I feel are strong, positive for having open metaverse built on even a stronger decentralized foundation than the web was. And hopefully those will tilt the scale in favor of something we all want.
[00:14:24.912] Kent Bye: Yeah. And what I would say is that Tony Creasy has come up with his seven rules of the metaverse. And one of the things he says is that the metaverse is hardware independent, which I think is trying to live into what the internet now is. And you're adding another spatial layer on top of that. And so we're expanding upon what we have existing. Now, the caveat is that when we look at the mobile phone market, we have essentially a duopoly between Apple's iOS and Google's Android. And so we're in some ways moving into another realm where we're going to be with immersive technologies. likely some combination of either a duopoly or maybe we'll have three companies. There's not seemingly a lot of independent companies that are out there. There are some that are out there, but what's likely to happen is that our portal into these immersive worlds will be through the context of economic terms of service. So even if we are under the open metaverse through the Oculus browser, we're maybe using Oculus Quest, which is governed by the rules and regulations of what Meta are doing with their system. So Lawrence Lessig has like these different spheres that I like to look to. And I think as I nest them, I look at the culture is that the largest area where you have human rights and other ethical guidelines, but that's informing a legal regime within a certain context here in the United States, those companies are ruled by US law. So you have Apple and Meta. We need a robust new federal privacy law in the United States to be able to cover some of those things. And then you have the market dynamics. And so you're going to have a dialectic between, say, Apple versus Meta, where Apple will say, well, we're more for privacy, but you have to pay for it. And then Meta is like the tradeoff is that you're mortgaging your privacy, but it's cheaper and more accessible. And then I guess the final thing are the different technological archetypes. that you can start to implement, whether that's homomorphic encryption or differential privacy. There may be some aspects of the privacy concerns that you can address at that architecture level, but the issue is that it's usually within the economic context. They know who you are already, and so it's more about leaking information about your identity and still capturing all this information that's contextually relevant. If they are rendering all that information and they know where you're at, then they're in some ways listening to everything that could be happening and then being aware of that context and then doing all that surveillance on top of you. So even if you are accessing the open metaverse, if you're using one of the technologies from these companies, you could still be subjected to all these other dangers that we've been talking about.
[00:16:31.824] Kate Edwards: So it sounds to me, I mean, one of the key issues that we're really talking about, too, is this ethical responsibility of companies to ensure that there's going to be some level of interoperability, both on the content level, on the technical level, I guess, in a way very similar to how we have the longstanding internet access model with where we all go through ISPs. But generally, the ISP experience tends to be invisible because the service that we are provided with basically the the internet that we're getting to our homes is pretty much the same, just depending on the technology, whether you're cable or fiber or something like that. So I'm curious what you think about companies with this issue of ethical responsibility for interoperability. Because generally speaking, at least from my perspective, it's like without interoperability, like true interoperability, there is no metaverse. It doesn't really work. If you can't easily move between platforms, if you're stuck in a particular walled garden, which we tend to see that model pop up frequently, is that really the metaverse? And what responsibility do these companies have to actually work with each other to ensure that cross-platform access?
[00:17:31.097] Kent Bye: Thankfully, there has been a lot of efforts with things like the Khronos Group and OpenXR to be able to get a standard set of interoperable APIs at more of a low level. There's still business decisions in terms of how interoperable it is to be able to say, experience different experiences that are within the context of one world garden, outside of that world garden. So at least at the lower level with the Khronos Group and OpenXR, there seems to be a lot of buy-in into that as a kind of a low-level interoperability. There's also WebXR, which in terms of having access to the open metaverse, it's good to see that there's been implementations within meta with Oculus Browser, But, you know, I guess we're still waiting to see what's going to happen with Apple and whether or not they're going to implement that within Safari, because you have this situation where they've kind of been lax in implementing a lot of those open web standards to be able to drive people into their native apps. So I hope to see that as we move forward, that there is more adoption of those open standards and support so that we can start to have alternatives to that closed wall garden method. But there is, I'd say, some optimistic movements when it comes to things like OpenXR and WebXR.
[00:18:30.626] Jules Urbach: You know, I'm deep in the open standards space because again, I mean, I think one of the fundamental requirements of an open metaverse is open standards, a data format that certainly for 3D that, you know, everyone can agree to. And, you know, I am part of the JLTF working group and that's actually within that group, there's an active discussion around how to make JLTF ready for the metaverse. There are a lot of NFTs, you know, you can just upload a JLT or JLTF file and that becomes an NFT, but it's really simple. It doesn't necessarily deal with the mechanics of, you know, how does a JLTF in one game, even if you have to put it to work in another with the physics, with the game mechanics, You have multiple computing engines and renders. So from the perspective of getting JLTF to the point where it encapsulates all the pieces you'd want to have a portable game object. I mean, that worked as ahead of us, but I think the JLTF work group is for sure working on that. You do have a bit of Apple and video, which normally don't agree on much, right? They've agreed on a physics standard for USD. USD is the basis of Apple's AR format. JLTF-USD can work together. And then we also started a project called ITMF, which is a JSON schema that can link these things together. You can have JLTF-USD files. It's open source, open-source, royalty-free. We're contributing it to the JLTF working group. And more importantly, it works with multiple engines and renders. So Unity and Unreal can work together. You can mix them in one instance. And we've even supported competitors to O2OI's renderer. They have Redshift and Arnold, which are two other renderers. They can consume this format. And I think it's important to think about it in the web sort of way, where you can have this kind of high-level graph that they have with HTML that can be rendered and consumed by anyone. There's an industry consortium or maybe a DAO that can help further that along. That's so important. And if you get that right, then the browser model for an open metaverse becomes much more viable. At Kent's point, yeah, I mean, OpenXR is a huge win. With Apple, you do have Quick Look and things like that that are built into the system, but not WebXR-based. So hopefully we'll see some opening up of that as well on the Apple side.
[00:20:12.930] Micaela Mantegna: I completely agree with what Shultz was saying, because this question about interoperability is something that is really important for me from my background, that is intellectual property, because you can have a truly open metaverse if you don't have legal interoperability on top of technical interoperability. Because even if you own your content, because one of the promises about the metaverse is that it's true ownership of your digital assets, you're not going to be able to take it or have the same functionalities from one metaverse to another, because it's going to be this other layer of regulation and intellectual property and licensing and contracts and terms of service. that will prevent you to do so. And one of the huge discussions that still is ongoing is how the first sale principle is going to apply to digital goods. Because if you are buying a T-shirt in the analog world, you can take it, you can wear it, whatever you want, but that might not be true for the metaverse, for a cosmetic item. And for people to relate, it's very similar to what you already have with an e-book, that you can buy it from a platform and maybe you cannot use it in another platform or in another device that the one you already bought it for. So for me, these kind of two layers that are connected and showcase the relevance of intellectual property regulation and the limits and the space that has to be able for open and public domain content to flow is going to have in building the content for the metaverse and translating the content from one place to another with content portability.
[00:21:41.047] Kate Edwards: All great points. So as we're starting to wrap up here in our conversation, one thing I do want to make sure we address is this idea that has come up a lot in conversations I've had with people about the metaverse, especially in the work I do on a global scale, is the fact that we have a lot of socioeconomic and infrastructure disparity around the world from locale to locale. So how do companies ensure, and I guess, again, back to the idea of the ethical responsibility of companies having a level playing field in terms of having access to the metaverse? How do they go about that? And I realize that's a big question with a little bit of time left, but I'm just curious about your thoughts about that particular issue, because it does come up a lot. And of course, we want to make sure that the metaverse that is being created is globally inclusive as well. How about we start with you, Jules?
[00:22:27.012] Jules Urbach: I feel like access to the metaverse is probably not going to be radically different than access to the internet, right? I mean, if you have bandwidth where you are anywhere in the world and that bandwidth is good enough to stream video, it's possible that you could then expand that to having a lot of the world is also on mobile phones, right? That hardware, it's good enough now. I mean, the iPhone 11 is good enough to match what high-end NVIDIA PC was doing when VR was first introduced in 2014 again. So I think that the mobile phone revolution will continue to the metaverse. And I think that as far as the hardware, the bandwidth needed, you know, you'll have probably pretty good coverage just as an evolution of what the mobile phone has done for most of the world, not everyone, right? And that's the thing is that we want to try to get this further out there, but it's to me an extension of covering what mobile phone hardware and bandwidth has done. And I also think that a lot of the networks will be powered in the cloud on services where the hardware is again, covered in a more distributed fashion, even with ranger, the idea is decentralized that distribute that. And I'm hoping that leads to a lot greater access to everything, just as you kind of have access for information. I mean, there really isn't anything on the open web. You can't access one single device that has the access, unless you're in a country that blocks it. And that's another concern altogether. You know, from a tech perspective, I think we'll get there just from the work that's been done to get mobile phones pervasively across the globe.
[00:23:36.377] Kent Bye: One of the things that comes to mind for me is when I did my XR ethics manifesto in 2019, I created this sort of ideal realm of, if we're due to ethics perfectly, this is what it looked like. And then when I finished it, I realized it's impossible to be able to achieve that because there's inherent trade-offs between some of these different things. So one example of the trade-off that happens with accessibility is a company like Meta is subsidizing the cost of these headsets with a model of surveillance capitalism. So you're getting more accessibility, but at the same time, you're maybe mortgaging people's privacy. And so there is kind of a tension there in order to really financially pay for some of that, that you have these trade-offs that are inherent. And so, you know, how do you do things perfectly? Well, you can't do things perfectly. So you do have to decide what is more valuable for having a diverse, inclusive, you know, getting the technology into most people as possible. The strategy that Meta is taking is really tuning for that. And in fact, when you listen to what they say about ethics, they will always emphasize how that's one of their top priorities is to make it as accessible. I guess my worry is that we don't have a good strategy for, you know, often I feel like, you know, watching don't look up and like, I feel like one of those scientists where there's a huge comment that's coming towards us where we're sleepwalking into this dystopic future of all this surveillance capitalism, and that there's going to be this line that we don't know where that line is, but we're for sure going to cross it at some point. So how do we do that kind of foresight governance and preventative ethics to be able to do that? I think that's where we're at now is what is the best strategy? Is it a human rights level? Is it need to be a new federal privacy law? We're talking about new concepts and new paradigms and to be able to translate all these new concepts into existing law and jurisprudence is really difficult. And I think that's the challenge is that there's not a clear path for how we're going to get there to have both accessible technology, but also do it in a way that's ethical when it comes to our privacy.
[00:25:10.062] Micaela Mantegna: I will try to summarize very quickly what I think about this, because when we think about ethics, the thing is that might not seem actionable. And that's a difficulty to translate it into good practices, into something that could be put into practice in everyday's work. And going back to Ken's point, one of the discussions we have seen about access is the zero rating access and internet and providing internet access. That is when I think in accessibility for the metaverse, I think in three things. One is accessing the internet because we have a recent reports from the UN that one third of our global population has never been on internet. Second, in terms of accessibility with people with different capabilities, because we have been developing a lot of technology to get people onto the internet and how it's going to translate into a medium that is mostly based in experiences that are audio and visuals and enhancing these senses and not the others. And the third point is access in terms of the cost of the hardware to access, because it's not the same to access the metaverse through very expensive suit or through a device that is going to cause you motion sickness and make you headachy for the rest of the day, but still having to work in the metaverse. So coming from the global South, those are my questions. How are we going to ensure this balance? And again, the thing is that regulation can be complied with. but ethical principles are more of a guideline. And so if we don't have like these practical and concrete applications, we are going to fail.
[00:26:35.064] Kate Edwards: That's fantastic. A note to end on, because we don't want to fail. We want to do this right. And I think all of you provided incredible insights into this issue, which is obviously, again, very complicated. It's not something that we're going to solve easily, but it is something that I'm hoping that as we go into the development and the emergence of the metaverse that we're going to be eyes wide open on this issue particularly. So thank you all for joining for this panel and thank you for watching and we hope you have a good rest of your event. Thank you.
[00:27:01.111] Micaela Mantegna: Thank you everyone. Thanks everyone.
[00:27:03.735] Kent Bye: Thanks everyone. So that was moderator Kay Edwards, CEO of Geography and Executive Director of the Global Game Jam. Mikayla McTegna, she's an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet Society at Harvard University, where she leads the video game policy working group and also works on AI policy. And then Jules Urbach, who's the CEO of OTOI. I have a number of different takeaways about this conversation. First of all, there are lots of other ethical issues that are out there, but I think for me and for the rest of the panelists, the privacy issues are the most pressing, and also the ones that have the least amount of answers for exactly how to address it. I do think eventually we'll need a new federal privacy law, and I do think that we may need more human rights frameworks like NeuroRights to be able to address some of these things. But it's probably one of the bigger things that have yet to be resolved. I don't think that there's any comprehensive solutions that are out there just yet. As we think about this as an issue, I think it's something that lots of different perspectives shared here, both by Michaela and Jules, and my latest take on a lot of these different things, as well. But I think as we move forward, that's probably one of the things I'll be focusing on bit more of getting other perspectives on this as an issue because yeah like I said this is the thing that kind of freaks me out the most as we move forward this is kind of like a thing that hasn't yet been fully figured out and we don't seem to be anywhere close from having like a comprehensive solution to it so just wanted to help to spread these different conversations about it and hope to be focusing a little bit more with some other folks as well digging into some of these different issues And also just a shout out to Dean Takahashi. Thanks for inviting me to participate on to this panel. It was a part of the Games Beat into the Metaverse 2, which is a bunch of different talks are still going on, I think tomorrow as well. If you want it's a free registration, you can go listen to all these different talks and have access to all the live streams. And this was just one of the different conversations that are happening during that event. So lots of different discussions that are happening there. So, that's all that I have for today and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoyed the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listener-supported podcast and I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
