The Tale of Terra (Continued)
Unfortunately, but fortunately, Mrs. Smith had a massive heart attack and passed away even before the doctor could decide. It was as though luck tipped the balance in Terra’s favor. Armed with her new heart Terra walked out of that hospital with a strong heart and a new life. Being pushed to the brink of death, Terra had a whole new perspective to life. In the hospital Terra could literally feel life draining out of her but the heart gave her a new life and new spectacle to look the world through. The Wilsons were elated but were bleeding money. Terra’s treatment was expensive. They had to find ways to save every penny. Though they both had good jobs, HIV was doing a better job of fighting the money in form of treatment. Wilsons first task was to teach Terra English so that they communicate more effectively. Other than English, they also wanted her to start her normal course of education. How do they find the appropriate teacher/school who could account for her special needs while also conversing with her in her native language. This was a challenge on another level altogether. Terra was already suffering from cognitive disabilities and without a solution they would just worsen. To remedy this situation, Mr Wilson thought of educating her from South Africa itself, with teachers from Kwazulu-Natal.
Terra’s immune system was already threatened due to HIV and they could not afford to travel via a plane, expose Terra to pathogens and get her to South Africa for something like a crash course. They did the next best thing. They used lessons from the pandemic and started online classes for Terra. Terra not only got someone from her homeland to teach her but she also got so from the comfort of her bubble, her home. This was also easy on the Wilsons’ pocket. Though, Terra had this glimmer when someone conversed with her in her native language she still did not respond very well. She had never experienced something like this, hearing someone online and this was a rather new experience to her. Her only exposure to technology was television where only the character would speak and not expect a reply from you. She became conscious at once closed herself off. If only they could get teachers to teach her physically in real time. Since that was not possible, Mr Wilson did the next best thing for Terra. On his next work trip to South Africa he took a few days off and went to Kwazulu-Natal. He found a child healthcare center in Durban. The center had educational initiatives for cognitively challenged students suffering from AIDS. He explained his situation to the center and after a small donation they agreed to teach Terra online in the way Mr Wilson was about to explain. Mr Wilson elaborated that he would give them a special jacket, this jacket would track their movements and create a 3D model of the teachers. Basically, he would use Augmented reality to give Terra more normal sense as though she was actually in the classroom. Through 3D perception of the teachers and the teleportation to Kwazulu-Natal using this AR/VR system, Mr Wilson hoped to give Terra stability and educate her to the fullest in a more familiar setting. Terra was the best thing that happened to the Happy Faces pediatric AIDS facility. Being a non-governmental organization in the cash-strapped nation of South Africa they needed an influx of capital. Terra came as a blessing in disguise for them. Moreover, the amount wasn’t unaffordable for the Wilsons but it was pretty good for the facility.
The people at the care facility indebted to Terra’s situation used all means possible to help her in the best way they could. You might wonder what was the first encounter of Terra with the VR headset. It was pretty hilarious actually, each time Mr Wilson would put on the headset on Terra, she would promptly remove it. The only way Mr Wilson saw was to quite literally hypnotize her using the beauty of her favorite place Kwazulu-Natal. Terra was mesmerized she could faintly recognize a connection with the place. She felt a strong attraction to the place. A fantasy filled land with beautiful landscape and at a distance the skyline of Durban. Almost a minute later, she removed the headset and seemed like she was going to say something, she opened her mouth, teary eyed and as she Mr Wilson was eagerly waiting to hear Terra say something, a sudden jerk and she looked down and out came vomit, she loved the experience but felt nauseated. She looked up at Mr Wilson with a smile and he with his Doctorate in Engineering diagnosed her with VR Motion sickness. He could understand her silence and translated her silence as “Freaking Unreal”!
Her VR motion sickness got better with time and ultimately Terra was able to finally get proper education with teachers from her homeland in South Africa. She would spend the day doing her classes on the Freaking unreal virtual reality headset and the nights exploring her city again every nook and corner of it using the same headset through Google Street View. Suddenly though, Mr. Wilson would see lesser and lesser of Terra. She had delved into VR so much so that she lost track of reality. She started to show symptoms of antisocial behavior. She was gleefully floating around in the metaverse alone where no one could pity her. She knew what most people thought whenever they would get to know her story, they would simply pity her. Pitifulness transcends language.
This is actually quite an integral aspect of the analysis when it comes to VR: people are highly susceptible to a false perception of reality, anti-social behavior, abstention from physical human contact and physical awkwardness in form of introverted persona.
To a lot of people, metaverse seems like a good place to escape to from reality.
While VR can improve the world, it also has issues that should be duly addressed.
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The Future with AR/VR
Firstly, let’s talk about how AR/VR helps us today.
AR stands for Augmented Reality, which is an interactive experience where computer-generated objects are overlaid on the real world, enhancing or augmenting our perception of it. This is typically achieved through the use of a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet, or specialized glasses.
VR stands for Virtual Reality, which is an immersive experience where the user is completely immersed in a computer-generated environment. This is typically achieved through the use of a VR headset or other specialized equipment.
VR is strong applications in architecture to picture buildings and projects faster than a physical replica.
AR/VR has numerous applications in education for better visualization, entertainment, medicine(advanced training) and virtual travel. In the future the metaverse is turning out to be a full-fledged world where you can buy assets, talk to people and work. A current such world is Decentraland which has virtual assets/nfts for sale and transactions in its own cryptocurrency mana.
A reality where our life and world are simply reduced to a virtual world is not far from us. The virtual world is cheaper, it is deceiving (you can pretend to be whoever you want and can look however you want) and it is scalable.
It promotes social distancing and allows people to communicate in a way without exposing themselves to pathogens. The metaverse allows you to perform most normal tasks from the safety of your home, without polluting the world. You reduce your chances of death and exposure to harmful substances by being locked in a comfort bubble.
One of the major risks associated with this technology is the violation of privacy. While privacy is already a myth in today's world, AR/VR increases a person's exposure to devices exponentially, which can lead to the creation of deepfakes. In recent years, there has been an increase in doctored pictures and videos, and with the advent of even more precise technologies for augmenting reality, deepfakes can become indistinguishable from reality. This can have disastrous consequences for society, including false convictions of crimes, mass hysteria from fake announcement videos, and threats from deepfake circulation for trolling or scamming schemes. The most threatening aspect of this technology is the risk it poses to governmental structures. With no way to authenticate or verify videos and credible threats received through such videos, this could be a new technique for terror organizations to spam the government and divert attention from actual crimes and threats.
Here is a demonstration of what I mean on a purely light note:
There are two primarily used text to image converters which use AI Stable Diffusion and DALLE 2. Disclaimer: the images you are about to see are unrelated to AR/VR but represent a not-so-distant future where AR/VR will have progressed so much to have hyper realistic deepfakes.
Obviously at this point you can spot that this is a deepfake but can you just even imagine the juxtaposition of XYZ, one of the freest spoken, open-minded, liberal and atheistic individuals as a Hindu monk, a very restrictive, conservative and narrow-minded culture. (The face and name of this famous individual has been blurred so as to not harm anyone’s sentiments)
Do you want to guess what this is?
This is the satellite image of the Pokhran test from 1990s which was recorded by NASA Satellite.
Almost convinced right?
Well, this is a deepfake. Imagine if someone creates something like this depicting Indo-Pak border. The number of riots and the number of tensions such a simple rumor would stir up. In fact, one could simply create such a deepfake of an Indian military official giving orders and that’s it, it’s all out world war between India and Pakistan citizens. Such a monumental thing from a rumor. The most immediate consequence of such a rumour is going to be the citizens, who will believe things at face value while the governmental structures will be left hanging with resources stretching thin to validate or invalidate deepfakes/rumours.
Deepfakes can also be particularly dangerous for mental health, as AR/VR can be used to doctor images and videos which can be used by trolls.
The scalability of this technology is also a concern, as most technologies that run on the internet are quite scalable. This can be particularly dangerous for people suffering from psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, where a prankster can introduce any insignificant aspect to an image and create a permanent and evidentiary fear related to a person’s schizophrenic condition.
VR headsets and technologies are also susceptible to hacker attacks and data breaches. They can control what content goes into the VR headset, which can be disastrous for people who can be fed dangerous or damaging content without anyone else knowing. However, this technology can also be useful, especially for people with mental disorders. It can be used as an easy tool for phobia cessation, helping people get over their fears through virtual interaction with their fear. It can also be particularly useful for schizophrenic patients, so a synthetic reality model of their trusted or loved one can virtually accompany them. With the advent of technology, AR can add new objects or remove existing objects, which is a good way to remove potential harmful images or objects from the environment for people suffering from mental disorders.
It is crucial to have a high degree of safeguards in place for mental health patients, as their data can be manipulated easily, and harm can be caused. VR headsets can also convey information quite privately and in a wholesome manner. If not properly tackled, such technologies can be used by the propaganda arms of unwanted destructive organizations like terror groups. AR can also be used by political organizations to cast shadows on other candidates. Essentially, AR/VR can blur reality and make it difficult to distinguish between real and fake. The even more unsettling fact is that this technology is today open source, which means that everyone has access to the source code. Even if major websites are shut down, the source code is still there, and anything like this can pop up again. This makes these technologies completely unregulatable.
Furthermore, the appearance of this technology to be innocent is what makes it more harmful. To most people, AR/VR doesn't pose as serious a threat as AI does to them. The fact of the matter is that AI poses a threat some years from today, but AR/VR is already present in society with the dangers mentioned above. The issue is that very few people see the threat from AR/VR.
The metaverse is like Alice in wonderland, people fall into the hole of metaverse where they design their own worlds, who they are exposed to and can control the previously uncontrollable factors of life. Unlike in real life, where they cannot control the surroundings and create a life they want, here they have full autonomy on all this. Though, this can render people ultimately delusional.
There are arguments though on how such a virtual world will improve the climate by reducing our travel, create a whole new virtual economy in form of the metaverse where people will have the ability to buy virtual products. This will kick of creative commerce online and provide employment to a lot of people. Such limitations can also increase the risk of obesity and related disorders especially among the younger generations more susceptible to believe and accept Metaverse as the real world. Their worldview and their own identity will be the avatar on screen and the not the real them.
Metaverse and AR is equivalent of creating a world within a world and VR or fake reality is creating another layer of world within this layer, much like a fractal system.
Replicating all of our real world in the metaverse from clothes and attire right down to the car you drive in the metaverse. Calling this the fractal hypothesis, through creation of such a world within our existing world we are endangering the future generations and potentially exposing them to an extremely weird structure and society that is at least weird to this generation. No visionary intends for metaverse to replace the world and society but there is argument of introverted and techno-savvy generations to adapt better in this world where everything is online. After all, anecdotally, no one thought the world will run all online without physical interactions but the wheel still kept on going. We will see the exact same pattern in this virtual world of human behavior and such but the difference is this is going to mark a monumental change in the human society and civilization and arguably there are people who are going to adapt very well and some aren’t going to. Personally, for me, being in tech, I am excited to see where all this leads and how all the aspects will figure into this new paradigm but I am also scared on an emotional front for such a drastic change which might very well happen while I am alive. A lot of people say that the metaverse is an addition to the world and not a replacement. We have the best example right in front of us, the pandemic, everything went virtual yet the world survived but also with an increase in depression and suicide rates. There is an argument against this however that the pandemic was a drastic change where the old-fashioned industries couldn’t as easily adapt and accommodate but with metaverse it’s going to be a long and a slow process.
There is a lot to this discourse when it comes to the social structure of humanity. Can humans survive in a small limited space with no movement, learning, working and travelling with VR, its certainly going to be cheap but is it going to be as fulfilling. There is no point in discussing this today and attempting to figure out whether society will survive since its all about how the mind evolves. Evolution is the best thing that has happened since evolution of the man will automatically render survival of the fittest human as well as technology. Societally, I don’t think we are headed for much danger in terms of the society breaking down since evolution has a way of returning things to optimum normalcy though it may take time. Therefore, on a social front, we need not worry since evolution and the human brain will work their wonders and automatically create a world order where such a technology renders the society at a mutually acceptable position.
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Policy Recommendations
How do we prevent augmentation of reality and such pictures be used in the court of law. Such tools can be used by criminals to confuse the court and law. This can hinder justice and cause a lot of issues. For legal purposes I believe there must be some sort of watermarking or a way to differentiate between hyper realistic AR images and actual images. The main problem with differentiating between such images is quite difficult. Since such software is open source, you cannot centralise efforts to distinctly mark images which have been augmented. Instead, what we can do is impose on mobile companies to necessarily watermark every image with a unique identifier that is verifiable in its exact form. This way legal proceedings and all can go smoothly. Therefore, image evidence will only be considered which has the legal watermark and that is timestamped as well as verified with the device. (To go in depth, I am proposing in some way encoding some information into an image which is indistinguishable like a random number which is then hashed. This hashing of image reduces it to an irreversible alphanumeric string. This string can be stored automatically on the original device and an image can be verified in that exact same device. Hashing technique is quite accurate and almost un-tamperable. Even if a single pixel value is changed in the image, the whole string will be vastly different.)
Regarding issues like online trolling, scamming, and bullying, it can be difficult to prevent them entirely. However, one potential solution is to implement more effective fact-checking software that operates with a conscience and strictly enforces policies against such behavior. Additionally, companies responsible for creating such software could be held legally accountable for watermarking images in a specific way, allowing social media analyzers to differentiate between images that are genuine and those that are a product of augmented reality. If an image is found to contain damaging content, it could be automatically removed by the social media platform. For instance, there are two apps primarily used these days to create images through AI. Stable Diffusion and Dall E. I asked both of them for a scaled down version of a prank that can have effects on a normal person mentally. Obviously, I couldn’t use an image of an unknown person since these two apps couldn’t have found an unknown person. So, I used two quite famous individuals whose identity I will not reveal so as to avoid damaging sentiments. The first one has been generated using Stable diffusion while Dall e didn’t let me generate an image since it is against their content policy which is a good thing, since to a certain extent trouble can be prevented by implementing such simple safeguards.
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