XRSI’s CEO, Kavya Pearlman, on “Metaverse vs. data privacy” (VentureBeat)

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VentureBeat reporter Chris J. Preimesberger reached out to our CEO and founder, Kavya Pearlman, to discuss one of the big challenges we are going to face while the move towards the Metaverse: the consequences on Data privacy, defined a “clash of the titans”.

During the interview, Kavya explained what is Biometrically-Inferred Data, a concept defined by XRSI in 2020.

Kavya Pearlman, founder of the XR Safety Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for the ethical development of immersive technologies, told VentureBeat that “privacy is all about the data collection. Because there is this enormous amount of data [that will be harvested], you can’t have the convergence of these environments. That’s what I am most concerned about.

“This is now all about biometrically inferred data,” Pearlman said. “Our data privacy laws need to be updated because they are inadequate. This enormous eye-tracking, gait-tracking the way you move, the way you walk – all this analysis – can infer a lot of information about you. And then there are the intersections of these other technologies, which is just like a brain-computer interface that will provide the alpha, beta, gamma – and even your thoughts – at some point. What happens to privacy when our thoughts are not even protected?”

All this information – stacked in cloud storage and constantly being analyzed by multiple buyers – could give companies a greater ability to understand individual traits, Pearlman said. An insurance company, for example, might see a behavioral clue inferring a customer’s health problem before the person notices anything herself. “Now, the data is in inferences,” Pearlman said.

One common denominator about all of this that our sources agree upon is that this is only the beginning of a new phase of commerce and socialization on the internet. As time and tech move on, the results of the success of data privacy policies, software, and hardware will become apparent. The other item everybody agrees on is that national, international and local laws and regulations will lag far behind the advancement of technology, as it has for decades.