Metaverse ethics
Introduction
Alternatively, Metavethics refers specifically to the ethics of human behavior towards the Metaverse, as it develops and grows as an advanced, pervasive immersive technology.[1].
While the challenges are as dated as the early attempts to create digital immersive environments in the form of social games (Second Life), thoughtful academic discussions started around the end of the second decade of the 2000s. Metavethics requires the combined expertise of specialists from numerous disciplines, who must explore, study and develop critical knowledge to inform the creation of the Metaverse. Additionally, one of their most important tasks will be to create, amend and re-frame laws, policies and regulations to the challenges and opportunities resulting from the scientific and technological achievements in artificial intelligence, blockchain, Web 3.0 and digital immersive technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality.
The main fields involved in the Metavethics are: computer science, artificial intelligence, philosophy, ethics, theology, biology, physiology, cognitive science, neurosciences, law, sociology, psychology, economics, and industrial design.
History and events
The Metaverse is not a recent concept. In 1992 Neal Stephenson wrote a science fiction novel, Snow Crash, in which the term Metaverse appeared for the first time as a virtual urban environment that runs around the circumference of a spherical planet[2].
Almost a decade later, in 2003, Linden Labs, a San Francisco-based company, created Second Life, a digital, virtual environment in which people could create avatars and immerse themselves in a digital life through the use of an Internet connection and a computer[3].
Following these early attempts to build digital immersive environments, investments from the gaming industry, including Roblox, Active Worlds, Epic Games and many other businesses, provided a fertile ground from which the Metaverse and its correlated applications started to be developed.
Around the end of the second decade of the 2000s, other tech businesses approached the Metaverse. With a rebranding effort, in 2021 the well-known social media company Facebook pivoted its brand to Meta Platforms, as a way to “bring together Facebook apps and technologies under one new company brand and focus on bringing the Metaverse to life by helping people connect, find communities and grow businesses[4]”.
Microsoft similarly invested in the immersive environment business by acquiring the gaming company Activision Blizzard in early 2022 and by implementing early-stage developments of avatars and digital immersive environments in their popular Microsoft Teams platform with Mesh.
Similarly, NVIDIA with the Omniverse promoted an easily extensible open platform built for virtual collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulation for creators to connect major design tools, assets, and projects to collaborate and iterate in a shared virtual spaces[5].
The end of the second decade of the 2000s can be easily seen as the immersive technology renaissance, where the Metaverse, or its counterparts, cannot be defined only as a single digital immersive environment owned by one company. Businesses, experts, researchers are in the process of unfolding several layers of complexity around the study and the creation of different digital worlds which will have impactful implications on behavioral, sociological and psychological aspects of human beings.
These aspects have been previously discussed and the conversation that sparked the creation of the field of the Metavethics finds references in the Roboethics, which concerns ethical problems that occur with robots, such as whether robots pose a threat to humans in the long or short run. The field of the Roboethics was built on one of the first publications directly addressing and setting the foundation for robot ethics was Runaround (story), a science fiction short story written by Isaac Asimov in 1942 which featured the well-known Three Laws of Robotics. These three laws were continuously altered by Asimov, and a fourth, or zeroth law, was eventually added to precede the first three, in the context of his science fiction works.
Research on the ethics applied to the Metaverse started to gain more traction with the need of technology companies to understand more about future implications of the Metaverse in people’s lives. Companies and research institutions such as the University of Cambridge, Engineering Design Centre, developed research programs to identify new avenues to explore the challenges and opportunities the Metaverse brings to the society[1].
Empirical research
To find answers, trigger new questions and lighten up fresh directions qualitative and quantitative research has to be done extensively not only by businesses but also by academic institutions, research centers and non-for-profit organizations. The research in these areas seems difficult to extract[6] and research effort appears to be sparse and scattered and this shows evidence that the level of maturity of research regarding ethical, behavioral, psychological and philosophical aspects of the Metaverse needs to be done.
Research highlighted the representative applications of the Metaverse for social good, unfolded through a three-layer architecture from a macro perspective, containing infrastructure, interaction, and ecosystem[7]
Other research explored challenges and opportunities and identified key trends to inform the development of best practices for designing digital immersive environments that guarantee Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Safety (IDEAS) for all.[1]. A research effort from the University of Cambridge, pioneered a manifesto for inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility and safety in the Metaverse where ten principles for designing a good Metaverse were defined through qualitative research[1]
Notwithstanding the current research effort, the Metaverse and correlated research it is still in its infancy. The study of the field of the Metavethics proposes a common ground in which experts from different disciplines can discuss, create knowledge and disseminate it across communities, cultures, businesses.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Zallio, Matteo; Clarkson, John, P. "Inclusive Metaverse. How businesses can maximize opportunities to deliver an accessible, inclusive, safe Metaverse that guarantees equity and diversity". Retrieved May 29, 2022. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Stephenson, Neal (1992). Snow crash. Publisher Bantam Books. ISBN 9780241953181. Search this book on
- ↑ Linen, Labs. "Linden Labs webpage". Archived from the original on
|archive-url=requires|archive-date=(help). Retrieved May 29, 2022. Unknown parameter|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Meta, Platforms (October 28, 2021). "Introducing Meta: A Social Technology Company". Retrieved May 29, 2022. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Shapiro, Eben (April 18, 2021). "Artificial Intelligence Will Change World, Says Nvidia CEO". Time. Retrieved February 15, 2022.
- ↑ Knox, Jeremy (2022-04-01). "The Metaverse, or the Serious Business of Tech Frontiers". Postdigital Science and Education. 4 (2): 207–215. doi:10.1007/s42438-022-00300-9. ISSN 2524-4868.
- ↑ Duan, Haihan; Li, Jiaye; Fan, Sizheng; Lin, Zhonghao; Wu, Xiao; Cai, Wei (2021-10-17), "Metaverse for Social Good: A University Campus Prototype", Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Multimedia, New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 153–161, doi:10.1145/3474085.3479238, ISBN 978-1-4503-8651-7, retrieved 2022-05-29
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