eXtended Reality of socio-motor interactions: Current Trends and Ethical Considerations for Mixed Reality Environments Design

Social interactions are multi-modal, and their translation into virtuous and smooth interactions in digital, hybrid reality spaces constitute a technological challenge with profound but often dismissed ethical considerations (such as harmful consequences). In particular, the increasing reliance on algorithms (i.e., artificial intelligence) to emulate “seamless” communication patterns between human and artificial agents calls for caution in designing such systems. This short paper reviews current trends in rendering hyper-realistic human bodies and motor behaviors, focusing on the ethical issues of manipulating kinematics in human-to-human and human-to-artificial agent interactions.