Are We Ready for Immersive Tech?

The Apple Vision Pro headset officially hit the market in February. Equipped with high-resolution cameras, eye-trackers, scanners, microphones and various sensors, and using artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance these technologies, it is the company’s first device using spatial computing, which is intended to merge the physical and virtual worlds and allow people new ways to interact with each other and machines.

But, Burcu Kilic writes, the technology, though innovative, has brought with it a bundle of risks and challenges. “Devices such as Vision Pro collect extensive amounts of personal data, including biometrics and biomechanics, and acquire insights into users’ emotional and physiological states.…It is crucial that we deepen our understanding of and research into how spatial computing can impinge on privacy, trust and safety, health and, in particular, its impact on children.”

“In recent years, Africa’s primary multilateral organization, the African Union, has grappled with a resurgence of unconstitutional changes of government. A phenomenon common on the continent in the 1970s and 1980s has returned. Over the last five years, 10 military coup d’états have taken place in seven countries.”

Looking at coups in four of these countries, Maram Mahdi writes that the root causes are all markers of a defective democracy. “When leaders exploit constitutional loopholes to extend their tenure, they undermine the bedrock of democracy and rule of law….There is an urgent need for national, regional and continental actors to accord constitutional manipulations the same level of concern as coups themselves.”

The Digital Policy Hub at CIGI is a collaborative space for emerging scholars and innovative thinkers from the social, natural and applied sciences. Here are the latest working papers from the fall 2023 cohort of Hub fellows:

Naod Abraham: “Machine-Learning Theory and Its Policy Implications”

Frederick (Fred) Okello: “Bridging Kenya’s Digital Divide: Context, Barriers and Strategies”

Follow the links on the Hub webpage to find out more about the Hub scholars, and stay tuned for the upcoming papers from the winter 2024 cohort!

Data stewardship frameworks are vital to government departments’ abilities to fulfill their roles as public service organizations, all the more so in the context of rapid digitalization.

“It is the responsibility of national statistical offices to meet society’s need for high-quality, relevant and timely statistical information, provided with maximum transparency and while protecting privacy and confidentiality — in times of stability and crisis alike,” writes Courtney Cameron in this essay, a collaboration between CIGI and Statistics Canada, exploring data needs for a changing world.

A class-action lawsuit under way in British Columbia against Flo Health and a similar suit settled with the US Federal Trade Commission in 2021 reveal the degree to which period-tracking apps’ business models rely on the capture and commodification of users’ personal and sensitive health data. That’s a problem, Natasha Tusikov writes, “not only because people largely do not read or understand companies’ privacy policies” but also “because companies may deceive users as to their data practices….Data commodification enables data collectors to, effectively, use people’s data against them.”

Tusikov says that “with the class action lawsuits against Flo, it’s an opportune time in Canada to rethink how we regulate data throughout the economy.”