Who Writes the Rules of Virtual Morality?

Someone’s got to draw the line and Westworld isn’t helping.

VR is happening and not just a little bit.

From video games to real estate tools, VR is going to be a big part of the cultural climate. It already is. We’re already comfortable stepping out of the real world and into a digital one — VR1 just makes it more immersive. Imagine the conversations we’ll have with all the interesting people made entirely of code.

But before we dive too deep into virtual reality, we need to define the rules of virtual morality. What are the golden guidelines of the Holodeck?

Ten thousand years of organized society have help shape the moral compass of the physical world. Certain principles are fairly unanimous across cultures, religions, and governments. Murder and theft are bad. Empathy and compassion are more or less in the good column. These rules — both written and unwritten — help guide people in a world we can see and touch. They help us understand new and uncertain situations.

But this security blanket doesn’t extend to the digital world. When virtual reality can place you inside a world that doesn’t obey the law of physics, are you still supposed to obey the laws of general decency?

Some may argue that what holds true in the real world should translate to the worlds we create. Obvious or not, it’s clear that VR and AI are already testing these boundaries. The moral quandaries associated with Artificial Intelligence addressed in TV shows like Westworld and Black Mirror are playing out right now in early virtual reality controversies.

There is a huge and complex philosophical debate going on here. (Read for yourself here or here.) And since there are entire college courses devoted to this topic, it’s hard to stuff the subject matter into a single blog post.

But Coalesce is a product shop, and that means we have some stake in this domain. Here are a few areas of particular concern that have been powering our lunch hours for the past few months:

The Classroom

Our shop recently submitted a proposal to the Department of Education’s EdSim Challenge. We designed a VR platform to give students better access and exposure to the myriad career options in front of them. It is our hypothesis is that we can open exciting doors for students by giving them exposure to new careers in an engaging VR experience.

This is an early foray into how VR will plug into the classroom. As we talked about our long-term plan for our proposal it was clear that VR will be a vital asset to augment many forms of education in schools of the future. Students in history class could learn about ancient Egypt while standing in Cairo (actually already exists). They could witness the founding fathers signing the constitution (all set to a Hamilton Broadway soundtrack).

But where do we stop? How much of schooling is about the material and how much is about learning to work with and interact with your fellow students? How do you balance these new exciting teaching tools with a human touch?

It may turn out that the same collaboration and interaction can be replicated in the virtual environment as well. But the allure of technology always has the potential to pull us too far in any one direction. The truth is we don’t yet know the answers to these questions and it will be important to figure it out before we dive in head first.

The Gameroom

The popular TV show Westworld has ignited a number of debates in the shop. The show centers around an old-west-themed amusement park full of hyper-realistic robots.

After one particularly violent episode one of our teammates posed the following question:

“If you went on vacation to Westworld with your buddy and when you got there and he shot and killed all the robots and generally tended towards mayhem, wouldn’t you stop being friends with that guy?”

We generally agreed that was not a good look. You don’t want to be friends with someone who lets off steam by murdering anything that looks that much like a real human being — including robots.

That opened a wormhole of other scenarios:

“What if there is a hyper-realistic virtual reality experience where the players are entirely engaged and committed and where their avatars lead long, interesting virtual lives. One where when their avatar dies the players can never play again? What does it mean when you intentionally kill someone’s avatar?”

That seemed a bit tricker. Avatars don’t feel pain. They are just digital placeholders for real people. When you kill them in the virtual world, their player goes out and gets a sandwich after. What would make a virtual world feel too much like the real world?

Realistic violent video games are not a new concept. Grand Theft Auto, a game about becoming the best criminal possible, is one of the highest-grossing games of all time. So where is the line between Westworld and GTA? How realistic is too realistic? What is the tipping point where these things start feeling bad, emotionally or physically?

The Bedroom

This subject tends to get a little NSFW, but you can’t ignore the worst kept secret in technology — that all new tech eventually finds its way into porn.

The good news is we don’t have to open too many doors in that world to start wondering how human emotions like love will play out with AI and VR. This subject was essential the premise for the oscar winning film Her.

When people don’t stop texting at dinner we say they are in love with their phones. But what if your phone could really love you back?

Virtual reality experiences have already been shown to having lasting effects on users behavior and actions. One study reports that virtual reality users who played as a Superman-like avatar were more likely to demonstrate altruistic behavior after leaving the environment.

If virtual reality can make us feel things, maybe it can make us do things, too. And if it can make us do things, there are some pretty heavy implications on how we design these experiences.

Great technological advances are always creating “the next Wild West” but VR isn’t quite the same. Our Wild West was a new frontier that, while divergent from the old world, was still roughly based on the same principles and assumptions. VR is outer space; a new dimension; a black hole of infinite possibility. And we get to write the rules. Who wants to start?

Want to get in on the debate? We host free office hours for just that purpose (also sometimes we talk about technology and building awesome products, too). Get in touch at hello@coalesce.nyc.