Full Immersion (FDVR) Simulations - will there be ethical concerns that we need to address?

Submitted by peterflys t3_zsy52u in singularity

If we are all able to each have our own ASI that can create whatever simulations that we want, and we can "dive" in and experience those simulations, will we collectively need to come up with rules as to what we can and cannot simulate? For example, if we have the technology to create fully-sentient lifeforms, will we have a responsibility to care for them? Or will we make a rule that any "Lifeform" in our simulations are simply marionettes, actors, non-player characters, that are just characters controlled by the ASI? We also govern ourselves from doing particularly bad things to each other. I don't want to get too dark, here, but would we (or should we) not allow ourselves to do those things in a simulation if the lifeforms in the simulation are sentient?

What about simulating real people? What if we wanted to relive a moment in history in the past? If you wanted to gig with the Rolling Stones in 1982, would you be allowed to simulate 1982 Mick Jagger, or would he (or his estate) put rules in place that don't allow his name/likeness/personality to be recreated in VR? This one I think is fascinating because I think a lot of us would like to simulate and relive actual points in history. But trademark, copyright and likeness laws of today don't really allow these types of things without permission from the "owner" of the stuff. In my opinion, this could be the coolest part of a FDVR situation, I would love to live discrete events of the past and experience them, but I think that, especially for the recent past, those who were actually there, even if they are public figures, might have opinions on being recreated in a simulation and having you or I meddle with those experiences.

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AdditionalPizza t1_j1baqbv wrote

>If we are all able to each have our own ASI

Everything after that doesn't apply. If we each have our own ASI, the world will be so radically different that I highly doubt anyone is going take issue with using another's likeness. There would be no reason for law inside the virtual world if it is entirely your own. Do the simulated beings within your world have their own consciousness?

Impossible to predict.

If we're talking full dive, commercially available content that is supplied by some kind of company within the next decade or 2, then there will probably be a ton of limitations.

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el_chaquiste t1_j1baty5 wrote

I think the line should be in creating and treating sentient beings like disposable items.

For example, we should avoid creating games with NPCs that think and feel like a person, and that ignore they are instrumented agents. Yeah, the classic "creating a simulated reality and playing god".

Alas, this could get increasingly difficult, as we should start seeing AI agents getting more and more human-like, without probably reaching a clear consensus if they are sentient or not, maybe until some threshold is broken, and some pretty egregious ethical violations emerge.

In any case, video game characters should remain as philosophical zombies controlled by the system, to give only some believability to the scenario, but without any rich internal life.

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khanto0 t1_j1d3240 wrote

If the above is possible then there's gonna come a point where you can generate little AI's to inhabit your sandbox world/game. Even if the "game" pauses when you're not playing and you still have total control, tt this point its gonna get very messy ethically if its not already.

For example how wrong would it be to create a village of AI's and then send a tidal wave to destroy it, or even a monster for them to fight. If you know they are genuine individual AIs then it would be fairly evil to create anything other than a Utopia for them.

At least if they were simulated entities controlled by a global systems you could create something like the Warhammer world without unleashing total horror on so many genuine entities.

And thats not even to mention the ethics behind personally attacking them or whatever, which you wouldn't think twice about doing in a game right now.

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Cr4zko t1_j1ar4xb wrote

The only concerns people should have about it were accurately described by Louis Jordan in 1940: "You Run Your Mouth and I'll Run My Business".

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ShowerGrapes t1_j1b9j4c wrote

it seems to me that a vr simulation of a historical figure should be the same as a portrayal in a movie. i mean isn't that what it is basically? sure you get to feel like you're right next to him but he isn't acting any different toward you than he is to me. perhaps that will become a reality that goes along with celebrity. or maybe every one of us will be in someone's world, mother or father, best friend who's away, whatever. i guess it's the price of admission right? you want that than you have to give up your own tether to a virtual reality version of yourself.

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ShowerGrapes t1_j1ba5ty wrote

as for the other stuff, agan i imagine it will be even more strict than in movies just because it's so much more immersive. the thing is, since there are no rating systems possible for on-the-fly procedurally generated narrative the onus will be on the filters.

we've already begun to see hilarious ways people have circumvented those filters and got risque stuff by implication.

don't they say that's where art is? in the limitations of the medium? if it was perfectly replicable wouldn't we just have a slightly different version of reality? like looking literally through a window into another world. you can't really interact with it, not corporeally, all you can do is make your mirror-image hands interact with it.

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-ZeroRelevance- t1_j1cw2z8 wrote

I doubt we’re going to have fully simulated worlds, or at least I doubt that’ll be the norm. I think it’s more likely that an ASI will simply imagine how the world would be, and predict the results of certain actions and then display them, rather than simulate a world in its entirety. Doing so would require many orders of magnitude less processing power for a nearly equivalent experience. Therefore, since I believe that since these worlds will only be imagined, doing anything to people in these worlds would not matter morally, since they do not actually have any consciousness.

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Fat_Turd t1_j1b9esz wrote

I dunno, but your mom is gonna get a lot of virtual visits you're gonna hear about.

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