The moral programming of XR, and what we can learn from the AI experience

Abstract

Extended Reality (XR) technology is on the rise. The technology becomes more complex, is applied in countless contexts (as a professional instrument, a research tool or in the field of leisure), and its use becomes more widespread amongst citizens. It can be considered as the 'next big thing' to Artificial Intelligence. As with each new technology, its development comes with new moral problems, and new moral problems urge new moral solutions. Usually, these solutions are found in the short term in ethical frameworks or codes of conducts and on the long term in (enforceable) laws. In this contribution, we propose to not step in the pitfalls of the past and learn from the AI experience in the context of setting moral boundaries for technology development. We propose a moral procedure called 'moral programming' that should enable technology developers and tech-policy makers to recognize and identify moral issues that need to be answered by those who are to be affected by the new technology, equip them with a meta-method to establish a bottom-up crowd sourced ethics approach (including feedback loops) in their design process, to align values of those whom it concerns and those who develop/govern. To this end we reflect on 1) when are moral issues high stake moral issues that need the 'special treatment' of a moral programming approach? 2) how can we decide who should be the moral authority on the moral programming in itself? And 3) what does moral programming look like, and how can it be done? In conclusion, we will focus on several particular challenges that are exemplary for XR (and in particular AIXR) technology.