Rethinking Public Acceptance Mechanisms and Ethical Frameworks for emerging technologies in the EU: The example of Virtual Reality

On November 22, 2024November 23, 2024 By officialblogunioIn EssaysLeave a comment

Manuel Resende Protásio (PhD candidate at the School of Law of University of Minho | FCT research scholarship holder – Bolsa UI/BD/152801/2022)

Introduction

The European Union (EU) faces a profound challenge in the regulation and oversight of rapidly advancing technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR). As technological progress accelerates, the mechanisms that assess, accept, and regulate such innovations are being tested like never before. This article seeks to unravel the complexities of these mechanisms, exploring how the EU addresses ethical, social, and economic challenges arising from VR through public consultations, impact assessments, and legislative initiatives such as the “Better Regulation” agenda.

Drawing attention to key institutions such as the European Commission and advisory bodies like the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE), we examine their roles in shaping the regulatory landscape. At the heart of this inquiry is the question: how can the EU balance the often competing demands of innovation, public safety, data protection, and ethical standards?

By delving into real-world applications and regulatory obstacles—such as the effects of VR on mental health, consumer protection, and data concerns—this article presents an in-depth analysis of the current regulatory framework. Ultimately, the aim is to advocate for more transparent, inclusive, and adaptive approaches to governance, which are vital for fostering innovation while safeguarding societal interests.

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The need for an egalitarian ethical framework for emerging technologies

On November 17, 2023November 17, 2023 By officialblogunioIn EssaysLeave a comment

Manuel Protásio (PhD Candidate at the School of Law of the University of Minho. FCT research scholarship holder – Bolsa UI/BD/152801/2022)

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The blurring boundary between humans and machines introduces a crucial dichotomy between consciousness and information, shaping the dynamics of our technological engagement and the “limbo” between humans and technologies, situated around perception, is central to how the law assesses its potential effects on human behaviour.

According to Kantian philosophy, the act of perception is a private, subjective, and observer-dependent mechanism, which, by its nature, grants the subject a sensation of agency over the physical reality – their environment. This feeling of agency can be understood as the empowering subjective experience that is often translated into the individual’s freedom and autonomy. If it is true that the synthetical perception confers agency over the perceived objects as they are read into our reality, it must also be true that illusions – reasoning mistakes based on our perception – can be triggered if our perception follows systematic errors that occur whenever we store wrong information about our reality regarding perceived objects, or when we use the wrong model of perception to interpret the external world.[1]

What technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) or Artificial Intelligence (AI) will cause to our perception in the short and long-term is to convey analytical information from the physical world and thus trigger potential changes in our synthetical perception, which can lead to the loss of agency of our own our reality. Virtual Reality (VR), on the other hand, can trigger the same effect by deceiving the synthetical sensory feedback of our biological perception and replicating it through technological means.

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What is “Reality”? An overview to the potential legal implications of Extended Reality technologies

On November 18, 2022November 19, 2022 By officialblogunioIn EssaysLeave a comment

By Manuel Protásio (PhD Candidate at the School of Law of the University of Minho)

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When Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality become ubiquitous in our most mundane actions and inter-personal relations, they will certainly bring many changes in how Law addresses human behavior.

The need for a coherent discussion regarding the potential cognitive effects of these technologies and, subsequently, the legal consequences that may be triggered by their effects is highly relevant and necessary to avoid possible misconceptions in courts and legal systems.

The use of these technologies may result in alterations of our cognitive functions, significant enough to be considered a type of an altered state of consciousness, amenable to different legal consequences. On that premise, it is important to realize that these technologies can have both positive^[1] and negative effects.^{^[2]}

These technologies are built and defined with reference to the concept of reality. Such terminology is used to contrast actual reality. Reality, as it is defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is “the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them”.^[3] This reality, or the “the thing in itself” as Kant proposed, in the information age and especially in the light of technologies like Augmented and Virtual Reality, has become harder to ascertain, since the human model of perception^[4] is being exposed to more filter layers than it is used to.^[5]

The ontological dimension of reality has always shifted depending on the criteria and discourse used to define it. John Locke for instance, in his Essay on Human Understanding in 1690, describes reality as the knowledge that we convey on the objects that surround us. That knowledge – he states – comes from our observational Experience, which in turn comes from the external interaction of our senses with “sensible objects” followed by the internal operations of our mind.^{^[6]} He describes these internal operations as being a cognitive reflective process on the perceived objects, which can be interpreted as employing meaning – or affections as he says- to those “sensible objects”. From this systematic process, sensible qualities are born, such as “Yellow, White, Heat, Cold, Soft, Hard, Bitter, Sweet”.