Why VR experts in the 90s are still worried about negative use cases of VR

If virtual reality is not just a new way to play games or watch movies, then if this technology not only creates a new way of communication, medical treatment, and military training? If virtual reality is used to create chaos, how should we handle it?

Many people are talking about the positive effects of virtual reality, such as reshaping reality, and even creating a new reality. However, at the SXSW conference held last month, two prominent scholars discussed in depth the negative effects of the technology.

Todd Richmond pointed to the screen. One of the men and a woman was standing in a room illuminated by a gaslight. He said, “This is the 1944 movie “Gaslight”. How many people know 'Gaslighting'? The word 'Gaslightin' comes from lights that used to use gas, and it is a form of psychological abuse that manipulates their environment without the knowledge of others, and then denies that the environment is being To control, so the typical use of gas lights is, you slowly turn down the gas lights, and your spouse will ask, 'Is it getting dark?' Then you replied, 'No, I I don't know what you're talking about.' If you do this for a long time, you will make others uneasy."

"Is VR the most suitable platform? The answer is yes, if your purpose is this."

A scene in The Gas Lamp

Richmond is the head of the Mixed Reality Laboratory at the University of Southern California. He said that their team has been testing the possibilities and impact of VR Gaslighting through various "interesting things."

He said: "As a human being, our vision system is already very mature. No matter where we look, the resolution of the center of the eye is very high. The resolution of peripheral vision is very low, but we can still find the movement in peripheral vision. Because it means a danger. Our perception system has evolved into this."

"I've been thinking, if we put something in your peripheral vision movement in VR, but when you turn around to see it, it will continue to move, and will always stay in peripheral vision, and that will What will happen? I believe you will not be happy for more than three minutes."

Richmond pointed out that this technology will make you feel scared, like scaring you with a picture or a video. Because this will make your brain think in a very subtle way that you are being threatened, and technology can never remove this threat.

Lack of control over this threat will make you uneasy.

1. Benefits of VR

At the SXSW conference, Skip Rizzo, head of the Medical Virtual Reality Lab at the University of Southern California, called "AR/VR: The Promise and Danger Behind the Hype." "The title describes some of the long-term benefits of virtual reality.

Although the first attempts to commercialize VR in the 1990s ended in failure and experienced a "nuclear winter" (popular decline), virtual reality never really disappeared. On the contrary, this technology has since risen and emerged from the category of entertainment products and found its own new world in the fields of medicine and military.

Rizzo said: "What I want to say is that the prosocial use cases of VR (especially education, tourism, health care) have already appeared and have been for a long time. From the beginning of the first hype of VR, that is, 1990 People had been conducting research between years - 1995. People thought that VR would change the world, but for some reason, virtual reality experienced a 'nuclear winter' in 1996 and was seen as a failure. Technology."

He pointed out that the reason was that the technology was not ready at that time.

“At that time, the vision was reasonable, but the technology was not yet mature.” Rizzo said, “Then people are attracted to new things, such as the World Wide Web, by other things. But some people are still studying the prosociality of VR, such as health care. And education. They are still researching and testing. In fact, the biggest scientific contribution in VR applications comes from mental health and rehabilitation."

Researchers and scientists have found that virtual reality is ideal for creating environments that can be used for testing, training, and treatment. Because this technology can be used to create the final Skinner box. (Note: Skinner Box is an experimental device designed by Skinner to study operational conditioned reflexes. One of the founders of the new behaviorist psychology believes that all human behavior is almost the result of operational enhancements. And psychology shows that conditional reflex is related to voluntary behavior)

Virtual reality was first used as an exposure therapy to treat phobias. After demonstrating the power of this technology, the application of virtual reality has been expanded as a tool for intervention, scientific research, evaluation, and diagnosis.

Rizzo's lab has been conducting in-depth research since 1996 and has developed experiences such as virtual Afghanistan to treat patients with post-traumatic stress syndrome. In 1997, the lab found that when people were given specific training in a virtual environment, this could have a lasting impact on them.

He said: "You can put someone in a virtual environment and let them interact with the 3D space, and then this can actually change the function of their brain, especially the mental rotation. For some people, just 12-15 Minute interactions will allow you to see significant results.” (Note: Psychic rotation is a spatial representation of the power of self or object rotation.

In 2004, Rizzo's team expanded its research program to include treatment programs related to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this project, children with ADHD will be sent to a virtual classroom, and the system will distract them through paper planes and school buses. Rizzo said that this is a powerful evaluation tool.

In 2009, they added Kinect and began to help stroke patients recover some of their functions. Four years later, they started using VR and AI to train social workers. In a recent study, they used more advanced software to help people prepare for virtual interviews.

With Palmer Rachie turned out, and Facebook acquired the Oculus VR for $2 billion, the virtual reality has once again returned to the mainstream, especially in the game industry.

Rizzo said: "This has caused a huge chain reaction, many new things are born one after another. Not only the display but also the way of interacting with the virtual world. We have already seen VR infiltrate in various industries, and the market has been excessively boasted. Something is scary, and even the top government is showing concern and excitement."

“Although the game industry is the main force driving the development of VR, the medical field will be one of the beneficiaries. We will bring important and positive changes to people. What we can do in the virtual world will be the real world. People will have an impact, and patients will start to benefit too. The health care companies that have been born in the past two years are more than the total in the past 20 years."

2. The disadvantage of VR

This is a good side to VR, but Richmond believes that this is just a glimmer of light in a huge dark cloud.

Richmond pointed out that the problem is not technology, but its popularity is relatively fast, and neither humans nor society have time to prepare for potential impact.

The famous analyst Horace Dediu produced a table on the penetration rate of consumer technology in 2013. It describes the time required for penetration to reach 90% from 10%, covering technologies. Including smart phones, cars, the Internet and so on.

In early technology, you could see a steep but still relatively long penetration curve. However, for game consoles, HDTVs, smart phones, and tablets, we find that the popularity curve is almost vertical.

Richmond explained: “(a steep but relatively long curve) means that society has considerable time to adapt to this technology, to understand its meaning, and to formulate acceptable social practices, regulations and policies so that it will not But for today's technology, the situation has changed, digital technology and networks have appeared in the mid-1990s, and now digital technology has penetrated into all aspects of your life. We have never seen such a popularization rate. We are only now beginning to see second-order effects."

Richmond talked about his family's experience of being cheated. At the time, it was said that his son was arrested in the Dominican Republic, so his family transferred $ 1,900 to a fraudster. These scammers have a lot of personal information about the Richmond family and his son. All of this information comes from the Internet and comes from "digital life" in Richmond.

He said: "This is part of the unexpected consequences. For immersive technology, we are currently on the wire. We have a lot of clinical data to prove that this technology can bring benefits to the community. But the technology is unknowable. You must Pay attention to the application of technology."

Richmond pointed out that the problem is that we are entering a real "Internet era". For example, your toaster can exchange information with the refrigerator and then automatically order food from Amazon. At last, no one will have the opportunity to send you goods, and you are not even Know that your fridge has no food.

"We have not yet mastered how to maintain the boundaries between the virtual and digital realms. Now we will begin to connect all other systems," said Richmond. "So it may be time to start thinking deeply."

Richmond said that they are not saying that they require full government intervention, but hope that the government can give more scrutiny of the use of virtual reality and other technologies. Richmond added that he hopes that the IEEE (the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the world's largest technical professional organization, can specifically establish a VR code of ethics because there is no rule at all in the VR industry except for academia.

After the keynote speech, a listener asked if VR was being developed as a torture tool, and both Richmond and Rizzo pointed out that the current torture may be more efficient than any simulation.

One audience member said: "The potential potential of (VR) seems to be terrible."

Rizzo replied: “I would say that we can be proud to say that we can change the brain. We can change our behavior. We can bring positive effects to people with disabilities and mental illness, and others. But if you say this, You must accept the other side of the coin."

"There are many ways this kind of thing can be used to change us, especially because it has immersive interactivity. We need to pay attention to this. This is why the IEEE has made ethical rules so important."

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