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Virtual reality has a long history in science fiction. From the Lawnmower Man to the Matrix, the idea of VR has inspired artists and gamers alike. But it’s only very recently that the technology has moved out of the lab into people’s homes.
Since the 2012 Oculus Kickstarter, VR has become a driving passion for technophiles and developers around the world. In 2016, the first consumer devices became mainstream, and now the only questions seem to be how quickly it will improve, who will adopt it, and what applications will prove the most revolutionary?
Barry Pousman is one of the field’s leading innovators and a big believer in VR’s transformative potential. Pousman began working in the VR field as a founding member of the United Nations' VR initiative and has served as an advisor to some of the industry’s heavyweights, including Oculus, HTC Vive, and IDEO Labs.
Pousman co-directed, co-produced, and shot the now-famous VR film Clouds Over Sidra, and his work has been screened at the World Economic Forum, the UN General Assembly, and the Sundance Film festival. In fact, his company, Variable Labs, is building an immersive VR learning platform for businesses with a special focus on corporate training.
I recently caught up with Pousman to get his take on VR’s recent past and its exciting future. In his corporate office in Oakland, California, we discussed the power of VR as an “empathy machine,” its dramatic impact on donations to aid Syrian refugees, and how his home office is already pretty close to Star Trek’s Holodeck.
I know that empathy is a big focus for Variable Labs. Could you say more about how you see immersive experiences helping people to become more empathic? What is the connection between VR and empathy?
What attracted me to the medium of VR in the first place is how incredible VR experiences can be and how much remains unknown within the field.
Although all artistic mediums can invoke empathy VR is unlike traditional mediums (writing, theater, film). VR’s sheer form-factor and the isolating experience it engenders, inspires focus like no other medium before it. And when we marry that with the user experience of seeing and hearing the world from another human’s perspective, you get what Chris Milk calls “the empathy machine.”
At Variable Labs, our end-goal is not to foster more empathy in the world, but instead to create measurable and positive behavior change for our audiences using commercial technology. We are engaging in efficacy research for our learning platform to see if and how users internalize and implement the lessons in their own lives.
You co-directed, co-produced and shot the United Nations VR documentary, Clouds Over Sidra. For those who are unfamiliar, could you say something about the film. What was it like making the film? What was the advantage of using VR? And what was the overall impact for the UN?
The 360 film Clouds Over Sidra allows audiences to spend a day in a refugee camp and is seen through the lens of a young Syrian girl. It was first filmed as an experiment with the United Nations and the VR company, Within, but has since become a model for live-action 360 documentary and documentary journalism.
For me personally, the film was difficult to shoot because of the challenging environment at the camp. Not that it was particularly violent or unclean, but rather that the refugees there were so similar to my own friends and family at home. They were young professionals, doctors, and middle-class children, living as refugees with almost no opportunities to shape their own futures.

"Clouds Over Sidra is now being used by UNICEF street fundraisers and reporting a 100% increase in donations in cities across the world."

Throughout my career of making impact media, I’ve understood how important it is to get these types of stories out and into the hands of people that can really make a difference. And in measuring the actions taken by the audience of this film, it’s clear that it has had a dramatic effect on people.
When Clouds Over Sidra was screened at the last minute during a Syrian Refugee donor conference, they were able to raise $3.8 billion, far surpassing the expected $2.3 billion for the 24-hour event. In fact, the film is now being used by UNICEF street fundraisers and reporting a 100% increase in donations in cities across the world.
We’ve seen a kind of rise and fall of VR over the last forty years or so. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a lot of excitement about VR linked to books like Neuromancer (1984), and movies like Brainstorm (1983), the Lawnmower Man (1992), and of course, the Matrix trilogy (1999). In your view, has VR now finally come of age?
Has VR come of age? Well-funded organizations such as NASA and the DoD have been using virtual reality for simulated learning since the late 70s. And similar to the computing industry—which began in the DoD and then moved into consumer and personal computing—VR hardware is now finally hitting the consumer market.
This means that instead of spending millions of dollars on VR hardware, anyone can purchase something very similar for only a few hundred dollars.
Steven Spielberg's upcoming film, Ready Player One will raise eyebrows and grow interest and appetite for personal immersive tech. And as these themes continue to grow in mainstream media, consumers and publishers will become increasingly inspired to explore new VR formats and entirely new use-cases.
Personally, I’m excited about further exploring the idea of convergent media, bridging the gap between linear storytelling and audience agency. For example, Pete Middleton’s, Notes on Blindness, pushes the envelope in this way by involving the audience in the action. And the Gabo Arora's upcoming room-scale piece, The Last Goodbye, is another example that uses "activity required" storytelling.
But in my view, VR won’t truly come of age until we can integrate artificial intelligence. Then the virtual worlds and characters will be able to respond dynamically to audience input and we can deliver more seamless human-computer interactions.
There are now a plethora of VR platforms for the mass market: Oculus, HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream and more. With the costs of the technology declining and computing capacity accelerating, where do you see VR having the most impact over the next 10-15 years?
For impact from VR, the clear and away winner will be education.
The research from Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, the MIT Media Lab, USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, and many other top-tier institutions has shown the efficacy of VR for learning and development with excellent results. In fact, a new study from researchers in China showed incredible improvement for students using VR when learning both theoretical concepts and practical skills at the high school level.

"Immersive education will permeate all sectors from medicine to transportation to agriculture."

And immersive education (VR, AR and MR) will permeate all sectors from medicine to transportation to agriculture. E-commerce is going to see a huge shift as well. Amazon and Google will no doubt be creating VR shopping experiences very soon if they haven’t started already. In addition to this, autonomous cars are a perfect fit for VR and AR. Self-driving cars will create an entirely new living room for families with both individual and group VR and AR experiences for learning and entertainment.
VR breaks the square frame of traditional narratives. What does VR mean to art and storytelling?
Seeing well-made and well thought out VR is one of the most satisfying experiences one can have.
I look at the incredible work of Oculus Story Studio, and it’s obvious they’ve tapped into a whole new way of looking at story development for VR. And Within continues to break new boundaries in art and storytelling by adding new technologies while maintaining nuanced storylines, most recently through voice input in their latest work, Life of Us.
One of the best places to discover this sort of content is through Kaleidoscope, a traveling VR festival and collective of VR and AR artists, animators, filmmakers, and engineers.
There looks to be a pretty wide array of applications for VR including military training, education, gaming, advertising, entertainment, etc. What kind of projects are you currently working on?
We are excited about the enterprise training space. Imagine on your first day of work you get handed a nice VR headset instead of a stack of books and papers.
We used to think of the platform we’re building as the “Netflix of Learning” but we’ve now started exploring a Virtual Campus model. So imagine on that first day of work, you can (virtually) sit down with your new CEO in their office, meet other employees, speak with your HR manager, and fill out your new-hire forms from inside the headset using the controller.
For now, VR is limited to headsets or head-mounted displays (HMD). What new interfacing systems could we see in the future? When will we get the Star Trek holodeck?
There will be two form factors of VR/AR as we move forward, glasses for mobile use and rooms for higher fidelity experiences. I just installed an HTC Vive in my home office, and it feels pretty close to the Holodeck already! The empty room turns into an art gallery, a paintball field, a deep-sea dive, and a public speaking simulator. And what we get to take out of it is an expanded viewpoint, a raised consciousness, memories and the occasional screenshot. This is just the beginning, and it’s going to change how we learn and play in profound ways.
Image Credit: Shutterstock Continue reading →

This article is part of a new series exploring the skills leaders must learn to make the most of rapid change in an increasingly disruptive world. The first article in the series, “How the Most Successful Leaders Will Thrive in an Exponential World,” broadly outlines four critical leadership skills—futurist, technologist, innovator, and humanitarian—and how they work together.
Today's post, part three in the series, takes a more detailed look at leaders as humanitarians. Be sure to check out part two of the series, "How Leaders Dream Boldly to Bring New Futures to Life," and stay tuned for upcoming articles exploring leaders as technologists and innovators.
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, posted a public manifesto of nearly 6,000 words to Facebook’s community of almost 1.9 billion people called “Building a Global Community.” In the opening lines, readers quickly see that this isn’t about a product update or policy change, but rather focuses on a larger philosophical question that Zuckerberg courageously poses: “Are we building the world we all want?”
The manifesto was not without controversy, raising very public concerns from traditional media companies and questions from Washington insiders who actively wonder about Zuckerberg’s longer-term political aspirations.
Regardless of your interpretation of the manifesto’s intent, what’s remarkable is that a private sector CEO—someone who is typically laser-focused on growth projections and shareholder return—has declared a very ambitious aspiration to use the technology platform to promote and strengthen a global community.
As we enter an era of increasing globalization and connectivity, what is the responsibility of leaders, not just ones elected to public office, to support the betterment of the lives they touch? How might leaders support the foundational needs of their employees, customers, investors and strategic partners—to lead like a humanitarian?
What It Means to Lead Like a Humanitarian
To lead like a humanitarian requires making choices to transform scarce resources into abundant opportunities to positively and responsibly impact communities far beyond our own.
This might mean making big investments in solving our world’s biggest challenges. Or it might mean adopting a business model that intentionally serves a specific population in need or promotes sustainability, community service and employee engagement outside the office.
At its foundation, leading like a humanitarian means taking responsibility for how we connect our work—regardless of the job—to a meaningful purpose beyond growth and profitability.
Unlocking Possibilities by Liberating Scarce Resources
Technology is at the core of some of today’s biggest businesses, and organizations can have more impact now than in the past. While tech can be used to produce great products, it can also be aimed at solving big problems in the world by liberating resources that were once scarce and making them more abundant for more people.
What does this look like in practice? Apps abound that use the sensors and software on your phone for entertainment, everyday productivity, and socializing. But the same sensors, motivated by a different purpose, can be used to make your phone an intelligent aid for the blind, a diagnostic tool for doctors in remote areas, or an off-the-shelf radiation detector.
It’s not to say the first purpose is worthless—it’s great to relax with a quick game of Angry Birds every so often. But it isn’t the only goal worth pursuing, and with a dose of creativity and a different focus, the same skills used to produce games can make tools to help those in need.
This is an example using now-familiar mobile technology, but other technologies are coming with even greater potential for positive impact. These include breakthroughs in areas such as digital fabrication, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence and robotics. As these technologies arrive and become more accessible, we need to consider how they can be used for good too.
But technology isn’t the only resource to which leaders should pay heed.
Perhaps one of the most valuable resources technology can help liberate is human potential. No problem goes unsolved without someone taking up the challenge and aiming to find a solution. Leaders need to motivate and enable team members as much as possible.
And here, technology is proving a good tool too. A recent Deloitte report on global human capital trends found that the digitization of human capital processes is radically changing how employees engage with work, from the recruitment process through leadership development and career advancement.
Technology is enabling learning to move from episodic, generic training to continuous, blended social exchanges. Platforms such as Degreed, EdCast and Axonify move beyond bounded online classes by offering microlearning and on-demand learning opportunities.
Leaders need to assess if they are supporting a culture conducive to continuous learning and if they are empowering all employees to learn from and with each other.
As we widen our view of what’s possible, what actually happens in practice will change too. Together, the ability of people and technology to solve big problems has never been greater.
Developing New Business Models
As technology enables teams, big and small, to make an impact as never before, leaders and organizations need to reimagine who they are serving, what they are serving, and how they are serving them in viable, sustainable and profitable ways. Businesses no longer need to choose between maximizing profit and helping society. They can choose to do both.
Last year Fortune Magazine’s "Change the World" cover story featured 50 successful global companies that are doing well by doing good.
Its top profiled company, GlaxoSmithKline, is making choices to ensure growth and help people by reversing the traditional business model of maximizing revenue through protected drug patents. They are no longer filing patents in poor countries to enable lower prices and improved access to medicine in those countries. They are also partnering with NGOs to retrain workers on the proper administration of drugs and collaborating with governments to make their drugs part of national treatment programs of HIV and other widespread diseases.

Nearly five billion new people are expected to come online through high-speed internet in the next ten years. Now is the time to imagine what new opportunities are on the horizon—not just for tapping new markets and customers but for how you empower them too.
In an increasingly dynamic world, re-evaluating old business models is a key new strategy.
Leaders need to build proficiency in both critically examining current models and creatively exploring fundamentally new ways of thinking about value creation and capture.
Live a Higher Purpose Within Your Organization
One of the most powerful ways a leader can motivate and enable these changes is to actively and continuously clarify the organization’s higher purpose—the “why” that drives the work—and to make choices that are consistent with what the company stands for.
There has been a lot of social science suggesting all workers—especially those in “Generation Z”—are motivated by work that matters to them. In her book, The Progress Principle, Harvard Business School professor Theresa Amabile argues that the most important motivator of great work is the feeling of meaning and progress—that your work matters.
Leading as a humanitarian requires modeling meaning throughout the organization and behaving in ways congruent with core values, internally and externally.
Last year, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, pushed for LGBT rights in Indiana, North Carolina and Georgia. In 2015, a company-wide survey revealed Salesforce had a gender discrepancy in pay, which Benioff remedied in what has been called the “$3 million dollar raise.” In January, Salesforce said they would adjust pay again to level out the salaries of employees who joined up through acquisitions and didn’t share the gender equality salary policies. And they’ve said they will monitor the gap as an ongoing initiative and commitment to employees.
In a Time article last year, Benioff stated his rationale for taking an active stance, “If I were to write a book today, I would call it CEO 2.0: How the Next Generation CEO Has to Be an Advocate for Stakeholders, Not Just Shareholders. That is, today CEOs need to stand up not just for their shareholders, but their employees, their customers, their partners, the community, the environment, schools, everybody. Anything that’s a key part of their ecosystem.”

There’s More Than One Way to Lead Like a Humanitarian
Leading like a humanitarian is a mindset and set of practices, not a single, defined position. But try asking a simple question as you make decisions about the direction of your organization: How does our work positively impact the world around us, and can we do better?
This shift in view looks beyond only productivity and profit toward empowerment and shared possibility. Equipped with ever-more-powerful technologies, capable of both greater harm and good, leaders need to consider how their decisions will make the world a better place.
Banner Image Credit: Zoe Brinkley Continue reading →

Is there a uniform set of moral laws, and if so, can we teach artificial intelligence those laws to keep it from harming us? This is the question explored in an original short film recently released by The Guardian.
In the film, the creators of an AI with general intelligence call in a moral philosopher to help them establish a set of moral guidelines for the AI to learn and follow—which proves to be no easy task.

Complex moral dilemmas often don’t have a clear-cut answer, and humans haven’t yet been able to translate ethics into a set of unambiguous rules. It’s questionable whether such a set of rules can even exist, as ethical problems often involve weighing factors against one another and seeing the situation from different angles.
So how are we going to teach the rules of ethics to artificial intelligence, and by doing so, avoid having AI ultimately do us great harm or even destroy us? This may seem like a theme from science fiction, yet it’s become a matter of mainstream debate in recent years.
OpenAI, for example, was funded with a billion dollars in late 2015 to learn how to build safe and beneficial AI. And earlier this year, AI experts convened in Asilomar, California to debate best practices for building beneficial AI.
Concerns have been voiced about AI being racist or sexist, reflecting human bias in a way we didn’t intend it to—but it can only learn from the data available, which in many cases is very human.
As much as the engineers in the film insist ethics can be “solved” and there must be a “definitive set of moral laws,” the philosopher argues that such a set of laws is impossible, because “ethics requires interpretation.”
There’s a sense of urgency to the conversation, and with good reason—all the while, the AI is listening and adjusting its algorithm. One of the most difficult to comprehend—yet most crucial—features of computing and AI is the speed at which it’s improving, and the sense that progress will continue to accelerate. As one of the engineers in the film puts it, “The intelligence explosion will be faster than we can imagine.”
Futurists like Ray Kurzweil predict this intelligence explosion will lead to the singularity—a moment when computers, advancing their own intelligence in an accelerating cycle of improvements, far surpass all human intelligence. The questions both in the film and among leading AI experts are what that moment will look like for humanity, and what we can do to ensure artificial superintelligence benefits rather than harms us.
The engineers and philosopher in the film are mortified when the AI offers to “act just like humans have always acted.” The AI’s idea to instead learn only from history’s religious leaders is met with even more anxiety. If artificial intelligence is going to become smarter than us, we also want it to be morally better than us. Or as the philosopher in the film so concisely puts it: "We can't rely on humanity to provide a model for humanity. That goes without saying."
If we’re unable to teach ethics to an AI, it will end up teaching itself, and what will happen then? It just may decide we humans can’t handle the awesome power we’ve bestowed on it, and it will take off—or take over.
Image Credit: The Guardian/YouTube Continue reading →

DRONES
Airbus Swears Its Pod/Car/Drone Is a Serious Idea DefinitivelyJack Stewart | WIRED"Airbus came up with a crazy idea to change all of that with Pop.Up, a conceptual two-passenger pod that clips to a set of wheels, hangs under a quadcopter, links with others to create a train, and even zips through a hyperloop tube…As humans pack into increasingly dense global mega-cities, they’ll need new ideas for transport to avoid gridlock."

ROBOTICS
How This Japanese Robotics Master Is Building Better, More Human AndroidsHarry McCracken | Fast Company"On the tech side, making a robot look and behave like a person involves everything from electronics to the silicone Ishiguro’s team uses to simulate skin. 'We have a technology to precisely control pneumatic actuators,' he says, noting, as an example of what they need to re-create, that 'the human shoulder has four degrees of freedom.'"

VIRTUAL REALITY
A Virtual Version of You That Can Visit Many VR WorldsRachel Metz | MIT Technology Review"The Ready Room demo lets you choose your avatar’s gender, pick from two different body types (both somewhat cartoony), adjust a range of body traits like skin hue, weight, and head shape, and dial in such specific things as the shapes and spacing of eyes, nose, and lips. You can choose clothes, hairstyles, and sneakers, and you can keep a portfolio of the same avatar in different outfits or make several different ones."
PRIVACY
A New Bill Would Allow Employers to See Your Genetic Information—Unless You Pay a FineJulia Belluz | VOX"Now this new bill, HR 1313—or the Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act—seeks to clarify exactly how much personal health data employers can ask their employees to disclose. And in doing so, the bill also opens the door to employers requesting information from personal genetics tests or family medical histories. Unsurprisingly, HR 1313 has captured the media’s imagination. Vanity Fair suggested the bill 'could make one sci-fi dystopia a reality.'"
SELF-DRIVING CARS
Intel Buys Mobileye in $15.3 Billion Bid to Lead Self-Driving Car MarketMark Scott | The New York Times"Mobileye, founded in Jerusalem in 1999, has signed deals with several automakers, including Audi, for the use of its vision and camera technology, which uses machine learning and complex neuroscience to help drivers—and increasingly cars themselves—avoid obstacles on the road."
Image Credit: Italdesign Continue reading →

Relax. Artificial intelligence is making our lives easier, but won't be a threat to human existence, according to panel of practitioners in the space. Continue reading →