“Take a chance and think differently. Be about the future, not the past!” 👩🏼💻🙌🏻⚖️ That’s what I wanted my master’s thesis to say about me after more than 7 years of studying law; I wanted to create something pioneering that I could be proud of, not just another standard thesis to collect dust. My thesis is about harm and liability in immersive extended reality (XR, which is VR, AR, and MR – virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality) and how the current law might be too narrow to recognize these types of harms and apportion liability for them. Even though legal paradigms have begun to open up to psychological and emotional harm in the past six years, more research on the legal disruption that is triggered by XR will be needed in the future. New forms of physical, psychological, and societal harm will emerge that do not fit in current legal categories, neither in civil nor in common law systems. Examples could be being traumatized, tortured, sexually assaulted or desensitized in VR, AR filters hurting body image and life satisfaction, VR making people physically ill with “VR sickness”, AR and MR apps being too distracting/addictive in everyday life, and VR neuromarketing and societal changes tempting people to retreat from reality. It might be better for the law to open up to new legal categories between the mental and the physical, since e.g., VR has such a profund effect on the body (see The Proteus Effect). I believe we should analyze XR more, because these technologies are simply something different than media on 2D screens. I also propose several legal, software and ethical guidelines for XR. I thank the many people who let me interview them for my thesis, Matias Katajavaara Seidler, Robert Jønsson, Jesper Roy, Kasper Hornbæk, Clarence Dadson, Kim Halskov, Jøren Ullits, Peter Svarre, and others, so I could create material on this topic (which previously did not exist in Denmark). I learned a lot and had fun while doing so. The thesis was not an easy project to do, and it took a lot of months to put together; the biggest and most professional thesis I’ve ever written (and I’m also thrilled that I finally used Zotero, haha). 115 pages, almost 700 citations and a bibliography of 28 pages in size 9. It felt like creating everything from scratch. Luckily my exam in ‘Artificial Intelligence and Legal Disruption’ went really well despite my nervousness, and I got a 12 (A) for the project, which I am submitting for journal publishing as per request. I also thank my family and friends for talking through some key points of the project and giving me extra knowledge about media, technology, and suggestions of people to interview. It feels awesome to have graduated and to see many companies and institutions going the XR way, such as Microsoft, Facebook, and Google! I hope this technology can be used for good, such as cool novel experiences, more creative learning, and hybrid work/socialization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . #mastersthesis #dissertation #UCPH #speciale #legaldisruption #XR #extendedreality #AI #VR #AR #MR #artificialintelligence #virtualreality #augmentedreality #mixedreality #mergedreality #lawandpolicy #proteuseffect #virtualavatar #immersion #virtualharm #virtualviolence #victoriasobocki #sobocki #techlaw #techlawyer #harm #liability #problemfindingframework #AILeD #hinyanliu #futureinterfaces #lawschool #graduation #neuromarketing #AIgovernance #kbhuni #juraku #kujura (at Det Juridiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet) https://www.instagram.com/p/CXHTHn4skDj/?utm_medium=tumblr
