The ETC@USC’s Phil Lelyveld gave a presentation on the dark side of AR at Augmented World Expo on Friday, June 2, 2017 (http://www.augmentedworldexpo.com/agenda/session/179581 ). His goal was to raise awareness of some fundamental issues now; before there is resistance to change from established AR and VR business models. Phil began by describing how the AR and VR landscape is integrally linked to the Internet of Things (it feeds data to the AR/VR experience), Artificial Intelligence (it will shape the end-user experience and avatar behavior), and to a lesser degree robotics (the relatable face of the AI). He then raised three dark-side issues; lack of adequate security, exponential increase of personal data gathered, and embedded bias and psychological manipulation in the AI that may go undetected for a long time. In each case Phil referenced work on possible paths to solutions. Phil closed by saying that these are not problems; they are known elements of an emerging system and should be part of any planning discussion. “We are defining the starting point and ‘training set’ for future generations” he said.
Philip’s presentation deck is posted here (170602 AWE final deck). The video of his presentation should be available on the AWE2017 website (www.augmentedworldexpo.com) around June 15th.