| > XR will soon not only include eye tracking, but full brain computer interfaces with very rich data on how you are reacting to stimuli. [2] VR and AR will have eye tracking in the next generation of headsets. However at the moment unless its trained to your eyes, its pretty inaccurate >5degrees off. Brain computer interfaces, are a way off. Yes there are ecg style hairnets, but we've not managed to generalise that yet. (we know this because Musk has confidently predicted a timeline for his BCI endeavour.) But that isn't the major risk here. We know that glasses need to be light, and not look stupid. This means that we need to optimise to the point of insanity how we manage power. This basically means that its impossible to jump out to the cloud and have battery life. The power budget for an all day wearable is something like 2.5wh So the risk of facebook listening in to all things is pretty small. especially given that they really don't have the compute capacity to manage it. This leads me to my point, AR will be local only for most things. but it will have things like build in "friend/object finder" and precise always on mm accurate location services. (its the only way to make AR content workable) The privacy problem comes in when people start to realise that they can make apps for these glasses that access the camera, A network of cameras that have ultra precise global pose (that is lat, lon, height and roll pitch and yaw of the camera) with inbuilt face detection, you'll have a pretty great stalking network. Now, so far so logical. Where it gets fun is here, if we allow open source, unrestricted access to hardware, it means that people can build and distribute these apps with little friction. Our present society cannot handle this. I do don't know what the answer is. AR has great potential for helping people. But I suspect its going to be a total shitshow. Do I think it'll be a shitshow because Facebook make it? no, I think Facebook will have to make the _most_ secure/privacy respecting system and prove it just to be taken seriously. Its the Apple/startup version I worry about. AR and privacy don't really mix. Butu we are going to kid ourselves that this isnt true for many years. |
Valve and OpenBCI have working Index headsets with EEG and bio-feedback data. Reasonable use cases are fine-tuning game play based on the players stress and enjoyment of different experiences. Today you can buy widget [1] that allow you to control objects in VR (if that game has used the SDK) with your mind my focusing attention on them [2].
Cambridge Analytica used just content and click data! (to build the most accurate map of various countries voting populations and identify key cultural fissures to exploit)
[1] https://www.next-mind.com/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMXfyZc_Gvg&t=221s