IGF 2023 – Day 0 – Event #207 Pursuing a metaverse based on democratic values

>> ELIZABETH THOMAS‑RAYNAUD: Hello, and welcome to our session on Pursuing a Metaverse Based on Democratic Values. Pleased to have those of you in the room and joining us online today. Those of you that are in the room and want to take a seat at the table, we invite you to join us. Feel free. This session has been organized by OECD's Global Forum on Technology and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan. So, I would like to start out by thanking, very kindly, our colleagues from Japan, for making this session possible, and their role hosting the IGF this year. We're extremely excited to be part of that.

The Global Forum on Technology, or GF Tech as we often refer to it, provides a venue for in‑depth dialogue to foresee and get ahead of the long‑term opportunities and risks that are presented by technology. It will facilitate inclusive, in‑depth, multistakeholder, values‑based discussions on specific policy topics among OECD members and stakeholders, responding to gaps in existing fora. The discussions at the GF Tech will feed into and advance future work of relevant OECD committees or other fora.

Currently, GF Tech is focused on three technologies: Immersive technologies, quantum technologies, and synthetic biology. The GF Tech will look at these technologies through the lens of three cross‑cutting themes: Sustainable development in resilient societies, responsible, values‑based and rights‑oriented technologies, bridging digital and technological divides.

We're going to have a chance to hear more about all of that and how this will be pursued during this exchange, but this is a little pretext on why the government of Japan and the GF Tech team have joined forces to bring these diverse voices together and explore this path towards the metaverse based on democratic values.

I have now the great pleasure of introducing you to our keynote speaker, Vice Governor Akimasa Yamashita, Vice Governor of Kyoto. Please note that Mr. Yamashita will intervene in Japanese, but his intervention is going to be subtitled here. And for those of you that are in the room, if you don't already have headsets, please grab one. You'll be able to follow the discussion this way. Vice Governor. 

>> AKIMASA YAMASHITA: Thank you very much. My name is Yamashita. I want to talk about the initiatives taken by Kyoto Prefecture. This is my slide, the first slide.  In 794, Kyoto was capital of Japan. It has a very long history. In 1968, Kyoto Prefecture celebrated 100th anniversary. At that time, we had a lot of events. One of them was to celebrate the companies with a history of more than 100 years. When we had that event to celebrate old companies, each company introduced their principles and policies, and we compiled a book depicting all those principles of all those companies with all the histories.

When I look at this book, many companies focused more on social values. It means that they focus social values. Social value is the first priority, and then the actual profit follows, eventually. And that is the policy or the priority of most of the companies with long histories.

Recently, they focus more on quarterly profit. However, those companies think that it's very important to fulfill social responsibilities. Otherwise, they won't be able to survive for a very long time. Especially managers have to have a very high ethical standard.  Learning from that. When we think about metaverse, there are no clear rules established yet. And I think we should bring in the idea of ethical here.

Since 1995, I've been using the Internet. There are both up sides and down sides to the Internet, and I'm certain that many issues will arise in metaverse world as well.

In order to create a good metaverse world, we have to ask people, the players in the metaverse, to have certain rules, ethical rules.  Together with SIP council of Kyoto prefecture, a generally incorporated association, we came up with ten statements, as shown in this slide.  It has to be free and open, and it has to be open to various people. Morale is very important. Discipline is important, and it has to be sustainable. 

Here, I think it's important to make it very free, but at the same time, players have to be real disciplined. We came up with a standard logo, and then companies and organizations who promised to follow these rules can have this logo. And companies with this logo have to have activities in meta world based on those ten rules. That's our initiative in Kyoto.

If you go through these ten rules, you can understand it's very significant and rich in meaning. It might be difficult to read all these in this slide.  But I think this can be applied to the global companies, in other countries. Based on these ideas, we want to create good and appropriate meta world. That's all. Thank you very much.

>> ELIZABETH THOMAS‑RAYNAUD: Thank you very much, Vice Governor, for starting off our session today and for sharing a little bit of that context about the principles in Kyoto and how you're using them with industry. We're also pleased to be in your fair city, so we thank you also for your hospitality this week.

I'm now going to turn to our panel discussion. Before I jump into that, we're using a term "metaverse."  Just to level‑set what we're talking about, this is the term that was coined by fiction writer Neal Stephenson, used to describe this virtual environment where immersive technologies are used so that the physical and digital worlds can converge, so that people might interact with each other and with digital content at the same time. We're going to hear a lot more elaborated on that, but this does seem to be a very exciting area that's attracting quite a significant amount of attention, but also funding. There are venture capitalists investing heavily in start‑ups. We've seen funding rights from $2 billion U.S. in 2016, venture capital funding, to over $12 billion five years later.

Earlier this year, the North American survey reported that the vast majority of investors ‑‑ about 90% ‑‑ believe that the metaverse is the next phase of the Internet and they imagine a future in which it's utilized for work, meetings, trainings, and learning experiences. 75% of those investors responded that they plan to maintain or increase their metaverse investments over the next five years.  So, it's not surprising that there's a lot to talk about.

Earlier this year, the Global Forum on Technology, we had an inaugural event in Paris in June. There was a deep‑dive discussion on immersive technologies, where we heard from a panel of speakers spanning perspectives from Africa, South Asia, Latin America, the United States, and the European Union. They noted that technologies, such as virtual, augmented, or mixed reality, have this potential to transform industries. They mentioned its capacity to foster empathy, understanding about issues like climate change, to create also deep human connections. At the same time, they described use cases in health care, retail, manufacturing, and entertainment. They also cited education as holding particular promise for those in resource‑constrained environments. It was raised that these technologies also magnify pre‑existing concerns, such as privacy, security, ethics, and disinformation.

During the discussions, speakers called for balanced regulatory frameworks to maximize benefits and mitigate risks to incentive safe, responsible, and trustworthy innovation. Sustainability and environmental implications and inclusion were also identified as critical for immersive technologies must be accessible to all to avoid widening the divides.

Persisting technical challenges, such as motion sickness and latency, were identified as remaining issues for technologists, but speakers also agreed that the biggest challenges in this area will fall to policymakers. So, today we have this opportunity to convene with you in Tokyo and those of you online to take this discussion further and explore how we can pursue a metaverse we want for our societies, based on Democratic values.

To help us do that, I'm incredibly pleased to introduce your speakers. To my right here, we have Audrey Plonk, the Head of Digital Economy Policy Division at the OECD. We have to my left, Mr. Souichirou Kozuka, Professor of Law at Gakushuin University and Chair of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Metaverse Task Force.

We also have Mr. Pearse O'Donohue, Director‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, DG CNECT at the European Commission. We have Camila Leite Contri, Specialist at the Brazilian Consumer Protection Institute. And we have Cagatay Pekyoruf, the Middle East and Turkiye Region, stepping in for your colleague.  Thank you so much.

Also online, we have Mr. Neil Trevett, Chairman of the Metaverse Standards Forum and Vice President Developer Ecosystems at Nvidia, who is hopefully there on the Zoom platform with you. Thank you, Neil.

Before turning it over to our speakers, I just want to let you know that we do have a question‑and‑answer period planned in this session. So, if you have questions, feel free to note them and hold onto them. For those of you in the room, we'll open the floor and the microphones for questions after the panel. And for those of you online, you'll be joined by my colleague, Maria Castano, who is serving as your online moderator, and who will help facilitate bringing you into this room.

So, without further ado, I'm going to turn to you, professor. As Chair of the MIC Task Force on the Metaverse, could you please share with us some of the key issues that have emerged and the impetus for seeking cooperations and standards for the metaverse?

>> SOUICHIROU KOZUKA: Yes, and with pleasure, I will talk about the study group or the task force in Japan. Yes, thank you very much. And now my slide is shared online.  Well, the study group was established last year and we met every month and published a report earlier this year. And we really tried to find what is really happening with regard to metaverse, and we identified several issues that focus more on the activities within metaverse, for example, the issues concerning (?) and the disinformation issue and with regard to players in the metaverse, so how we can address the fake issues. This is one of the issues to be discussed under this item. And also very important is the interoperability among platforms. There may be several platforms providing services commercially in parallel. And so, from the user side, how to jump from one world, or one platform to another platform is very important, and not least to ensure their freedom and ensure their right in the virtual world.

And there are also more kind of technical issues and when constructing the virtual world in the metaverse, for example, how to create the rights, intellectual property rights or rights to publicity, and when coping or kind of casting the actual buildings or things into the metaverse, and also issues related to data acquisition. Of course, that is very important. I mean, data acquisition of personal data of the users. And I threw that person's activities in the metaverse.

There are other issues that concern the relationship between the metaverse and the real world, and one of them, the user interface and the user experience, including the adverse effects that spending a long time in the metaverse could have on the health of the user. And finally, but not least important, we need to watch closely how the technology develops and how the society responds to these developments of the metaverse. 

And based on these findings, the study group saw that there are a few approaches to be followed or to be pursued. One of them is that it is very important to have kind of a common understanding about how to address these metaverse issues, and there is a common understanding, better to be shared globally, because in the metaverse, we tend to have less borders or national borders based on the sovereign states in the real world. And it's very important. And also, with regard to the relationship between the service providers and the users, we need to have some guidelines to show so that the service providers could comply with them and provide a safe and consumer‑oriented services and the metaverse could be a more, kind of the safe place for users to enter.

Finally, with regard to the interoperability, we need to facilitate the industry's initiatives, and we identified already that there are a few initiatives, so we need to kind of back them up, including standardization. So, these are the findings and our thoughts, the study group set up by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and it's important to share the participants and the work. 

>> ELIZABETH THOMAS‑RAYNAUD: Thank you very much, professor. We'll come back to you for maybe a few more details. Audrey, I wonder if you could please share with us some of the insights that have come from OECD's experiences facilitating global cooperation on policy to support values‑based technology development and to think about that cooperation and offer perspective on what we can draw from those experiences?

>> AUDREY PLONK: Thanks, Elizabeth. Hi, everyone. It's great to be here. Thanks for making the time to join the session.

So, as the OECD, we have a lot of history in developing multilateral instruments for cooperation. And in the area of technology, I think we have also quite a long history of developing instruments that are values‑based and that have been fairly influential in terms of how policy and legislation develops over time.

A couple examples that just come to mind. The first is the OECD Privacy Guidelines, and I know we have colleagues here from business at OECD that are undertaking a project that looks at the metaverse through the lens of the OECD Privacy Guidelines. So, it's maybe something to look at. But those really are the foundation of every major privacy piece of legislation on the planet, and most, many, many countries have them now. They map directly back to the OECD Privacy Guidelines. They're a baseline in many ways, but an important starting point to harmonize some aspects of privacy, for example.

We have other industries ‑‑ the AI Principles, which you're probably all familiar with, are a more recent example. The privacy guidelines date back to 1980, so they've been around for a long time and are relatively stable. They've been revised a couple times, but they've been a very stable baseline to embed privacy protections into data protection privacy legislation.

As AI has developed, the AI Principles of 2019, when they were being developed, starting in 2017‑2018, they really set out to look at the technology through a human rights and values lens. And so, many of the topics that you would think of as values, democratic values, are embedded therein, and then the work around specific technologies to do research and analysis around what it means to apply that particular value in the context that we're looking at, so in AI or in immersive technologies. Because I think at a relatively high level, we understand human rights, and to some degree, their application. But when we start introducing new environments, immersive technologies, we introduce new technological trends, it's harder to understand necessarily how they apply. So, a lot of the work that goes into developing, at least from the OECD's perspective, values‑based or Democratic values‑based, human rights‑based approaches to governing technology, it is about taking things that we know to be values and applying them in those contexts. And so, the AI Principles certainly do that.

We have a series of instruments around cybersecurity that look at things slightly from a more technical level, but in all those instruments, you'll see elements of democratic and human rights values embedded into those instruments. And so, I think there's lots of different ‑‑ you know, there's a spectrum of policy‑making that goes from sort of technical standards all the way up to hard law, and we at the OECD, at least, sit somewhere in the middle, where we tend to do ‑‑ we do policy standards that are largely voluntary in the sense that they're not necessarily enforceable by a court of law, but they are a commitment at a political and a technical level to follow. And so, we can usually make progress slightly faster than some hard laws, and they can be the basis for future policy and legislation. And we've done that in a lot of different areas. And I think as technology advances, I suspect there will be demand to do that in more areas.

I think some of the fundamental aspects of how we do it are based in part of why we're all here at the IGF --Imultistakeholderism engagement with a wide community of people and expertise across the business community and academia and Civil Society and the technical world, in order to create policy standards that can be implemented on some level. And so, one of the big challenges with principles, guiding principles or high‑level principles, is just how to take them from principle to practice. And so, that's an important aspect of developing policy guidance is to think about how to take, again, a high‑level democratic value and embed it into something that's actionable by either ‑‑ by any actor, but certainly in the technology space we think a lot about how it's implementable in the design and development and deployment and diffusion of different technologies. And so, I think the process by which we work makes it ‑‑ has been, you know, at least demonstrably successful in various domains and technology in terms of the ability to create the kinds of environments where people can come together and agree on, at whatever level they can agree on how to interpret these kinds of rights and values in the context of new and emerging technologies.

And I was very much touched about the Kyoto City's ten values, which I would actually like to get that slide, because I think there are some key elements there that I won't say they're missing, but I don't often see some things characterized, certain values characterized the way that Japan has characterized them in this context, and so, I think it's very interesting for us to think about.

The last thing I'll say just about the immersive space, because we have a lot of different work at the OECD, in this global forum and otherwise, thinking about immersive environment and the implications. And you know, we have in our forthcoming Digital Economy Outlook, which will come out next year, one of the pieces that looks at mental health in the digital age looks at immersive, and it's very ‑‑ it's an interesting look into how things that we may find completely acceptable in the physical world seem very different to people in an immersive environment. And so, it does require ‑‑ at least it seems to us ‑‑ require a different look at that environment, because the context has changed. So, while we might all believe in privacy or self‑determination or whatever, it might look very different in that environment, and they're a different lens.

So, we look at it through a lens of mental health and also through a lens of the technology itself, what's happening with the technology; how's it being built; who's building it; how accessible is it to all the things that Elizabeth talked about at the beginning; and then through the lens of different policy domains with which we have different expertise, like privacy and security and safety. And I think all of those are really important to bring together if we're going to think about how to govern this kind of space in the future to reap its benefits, which we've touched on a little bit, but I think there's some pretty compelling and exciting use cases which we heard about at our inaugural event back in June around the immersive space. So, thank you very much for the opportunity.

>> ELIZABETH THOMAS‑RAYNAUD: Thank you so much, Audrey.  We're going to turn to Pearse now. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about the EU's perspective on metaverse development, perhaps sharing some of the insights? I know you've had this consultation work going on. And so, if you could just share a few reflections on that with us. Thanks, Pearse.

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you, indeed, good afternoon. Happy to do so, because it was just in July that the European Commission issued a policy communication where we outlined our vision and strategy for virtual roles and for the transition to Web 4.0, which we feel this will be part of.

And before we wrote anything down to feed that communication, the Commission worked with stakeholders in Europe, among others, industry and academia, as well as with the specific industry, the European VR and AR Coalition, to better understand the opportunities, but also the challenges that we were facing in Europe with regard to virtual roles. We also engage with citizens, in particular in relation to the societal implications and challenges that are stemming from the virtual worlds as we understand it now. And we had a citizens panel on virtual worlds, which led to 23 recommendations, and those fed into the communication and will help steering our work.

So, an example of including the multistakeholder community at an early stage in what is a very important policy development in this area. And just as we see from the discussions today, in the EU, there's a clear wish to contribute to steering this revolution, because that is what we think it is, towards the use of values, such as respect of human rights, privacy, security, openness, accessibility. And those values underpin the overall EU approach to digital transformation, as you might recognise, and it's enshrined in the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles. And they're part also of our international commitment as set out in the Declaration for the Future of the Internet, which we actually had another detailed workshop on here, a forum this morning.

So, why is this urgent to define a strategy? Well, it's because most of the technologies underpinning this new development or this wave of innovation have been around for decades, but the combined effect of them with some new technologies reaching maturity today make it a sudden shift. And therefore, there's a lot we have to understand. So, we need to understand, how can we set the course for virtual worlds that aren't dominated only by a few big players, but also which do respect human rights and principles and which are in the term "human‑centric." 

So, we're aiming at the virtual worlds and the Web 4.0 to be powered by, obviously, open and highly distributed technologies and standards, which is the question that enable interoperability and freedom of choice at the same time for users, but also which incorporate other key policy issues, such as sustainability, which also must now be at the core of technological developments. So, that, interoperability, openness, security, as well as key issues like identity, rights, transaction management, they're all at the top of our agenda for the virtual worlds, and they call for global standards to be developed and agreed.

And so, just as has been said already, standardization will be key to enabling interoperability between different parts, different platforms, different networks, and will allow from the user's perspective the seamless use of identities, avatars, data, virtual assets, and of course, doing so in a secure environment and bringing with it the associated rights for the user across platforms and networks.

And since we are looking at virtual worlds, we want to look at open virtual worlds, and therefore, open standards, coupled with the support for open source innovation, such as in relation to the use of distributed ledger technology and other technologies needed for the authenticity, management, and security of virtual objects and identities. Without imposing one of those that I just referred to, but it must be possible that there are discussions with regard to what is the most appropriate, in view of those societal considerations that I referred to just a moment ago.

Now, just to conclude, we're aware of several international initiatives in this respect, and at the same time, I think we're all aware that we are facing a governance gap with regard to the metaverse, with regard to virtual worlds. Now, I understand that we're going to come to that later and we're having a session specifically on this ourselves we're working on Wednesday afternoon here in Kyoto, but the governance issue is also one which relates strongly to the standardization issue. Thank you.

>> ELIZABETH THOMAS‑RAYNAUD: Thank you very much, Pearse. Camila, we're going to turn to you. You've heard now from a few of the governments how they're looking at the issues, what they see are the important questions and options for working towards global standards and policy approaches. I'd love to hear what your perspective is on this.

>> CAMILA CONTRI: Sure. Thank you so much for the invitation and for the opportunity to bring Civil Society perspective and also a Global South perspective on that. It is with these lenses that I intend to contribute to this panel, but obviously, with attentive ears on the important perspectives of all stakeholders.

Well, we have seen that we have a two‑sided future with the metaverse. In one side, we have an opportunity, but on the other side, we have some challenges, both related to the real world and also to the virtual world. Therefore, it is essential to think about this value‑based future of the metaverse. And for that, I would highlight that we need a cooperation both from a global and regional perspective and also from different stakeholders' perspectives, so it is indeed a pleasure to develop this discussion with you all. 

Since we are already exploring the potentialities of the metaverse, I would focus on some issues that we have to take into account when we are seeking a value‑based metaverse. That means some issues that we have to be aware when reducing the boundaries in this convergence between the real world and the virtual world with the concern of not increasing some already existing issues and bring in other issues.

I could talk about several issues related to mental health, ethics, data protection, cybersecurity, product safety, also because I work in a consumer organization, but I would like to take this opportunity to focus on one main issue that we have to consider while building this, sharing centres for a better metaverse, which is inclusion.

We were talking about human‑centric technologies, how we should put people in the centre, and we can't use these technologies to perpetuate exclusion of people. And for that, I would highlight three main topics: Economic power, non‑discrimination, and priviness. First one, economic power.

We should gather forces, not exclude potentialities. It is, therefore, important to develop open standards, interoperability, so we can provide more alternatives for even more innovation in digital space, and innovation also for consumers in the end.

Non‑discrimination, in terms of understanding the necessities and the specificities of some vulnerable populations, in terms of race and ethnicity, age, focusing on children, for example, which as we have seen, Kyoto, the government of Kyoto pays a strict attention on that; in terms of accessibility online. So, we cannot perpetuate discrimination and exclusion of vulnerable people.

Inclusion in terms of priviness. And this is tricky, because we are talking about how to build global standards on these issues, but we also have to consider some regional contexts and some regional and cultural specificities. For example, I can talk about my region and my country. We face big challenges related to Internet access, and notwithstanding the great potentialities of metaverse for a great part of the population, they don't even have meaningful connectivity, at least. So, we have also to take a step back and think, how can we connect more people so they can enjoy the potentialities, not only of the Internet, but also the potentialities of this new technology.

Disinformation. We have mentioned that also, but in some countries, disinformation is harmful for elections, for democracy. So, we cannot use these spaces for these purposes. We have to think on how can we tackle that and how can we consider the countries or regional context related to that. We shouldn't have second‑class users. We have to think on how can we include more people. No one should be left behind.

So, summing up. We have global challenges. And as it was already mentioned, the borders are fluid in the metaverse. And because of that, we need a holistic approach and that joint effort of different jurisdictions and different stakeholders.  But we have to think about inclusion in terms of people that are included, not perpetuating discrimination, and considering regional contexts. So, we have to set global standards, but considering these contextual specificities.

So, how inclusive is the metaverse and how much is it perpetuating the system of exclusion, and how can we advance for the better? Until now, I highlighted only the issues, but I hope to talk more in a second phase on the potentialities on how can we solve that and how can we advance on a human rights‑based technology, human rights‑based metaverse, to enjoy its full potential, and we have to focus on what matters the most ‑‑ consumers, citizens, their subjects, Internet users. In the end, people should be in the centre.

>> ELIZABETH THOMAS‑RAYNAUD: Thank you so much, Camila. I'm going to turn it now to our online speaker, Neil. Good morning. Thank you for getting up early for us.  We'd like to hear a little bit about the Metaverse Standards Association, the impetus you had for creating this, and what contribution you're expecting to make to this journey we're pursuing in values‑based development of the metaverse.

>> NEIL TREVETT: Sure, thank you, Elizabeth. It's an honour to be here, and I hope to be there in person next time. So, yes, that's a lot of ongoing debate around the nature of the metaverse, as we've already heard. And I think at its core, something we can all rely on, it's a combination of multiple disruptive technologies. There's AI. There's GPU processing for graphics and compute.  There's XR.  There's Web3.  There's advanced networking, including 5G‑plus and beyond. So, it's also appropriate, of course, that the metaverse is being discussed here at IGF because the metaverse is going to be the spatial evolution of the web, combining the connectivity of the web with the immersiveness of spatial computing.

So, given that background, the Genesis of the Metaverse Standards Forum was the realization that the industry's attempting to build an open platform with an unprecedented level of interoperability, and that's going to take a constellation of open standards from dozens, maybe even hundreds of standards organizations. And as standards organizations often like to work by themselves, we urgently needed a neutral venue for cooperation and coordination between standards organizations and the wider industry.

And the Forum launched. We're very young. The forum launched in just June 2022. And the key thing, it's not another standards organization. It doesn't create standards itself. The forum seems to be unique in existing to assist existing standards organizations, create effective standards that we need for the metaverse through a close connection to industry and gathering real‑world use cases and requirements. And there has been significant interest. Now the Forum has over 2,500 member organizations, which I think is an indication of the ongoing interest in the metaverse as a topic.

The Forum takes a very practicing Natick approach, and it's not trying to dictate what the metaverse is going to be. We think that will evolve naturally over time. But we continually poll forum members on what is most urgent for standardization. We have created working groups that work on the interoperability projects to create a short‑term Treme of business opportunities while a larger version of the metaverse unfolds. We like to say we're not trying to create the metaverse cathedral, but we are trying to bake the bricks that we're going to need to build the road to the metaverse.

Forum membership has voted to create working groups, so many technical domains, 3D assets, networking, digital twins and more ‑‑ and many have been mentioned here already in this session.  But interestingly, though, the domain group that got most votes from the forum membership by quite a large margin was not for pure technical interoperability, but was for privacy, cybersecurity, and inclusiveness. And so, that working group is going to take close cooperation on both technical and legislative initiatives, and the working group has already attracted many experts in the domain, and interestingly, the group is working to establish social norms and other means to ensure an open, equitable, and human‑centric foundation for the metaverse. 

So, the forum is very active. We have working group meetings almost daily. And so, we hope our contribution can be pragmatic, industry‑connected and proactive input to the development of a values‑based metaverse, and we are honoured and excited to be a part of this discussion today at IGF, and we hope to be a constructive contributor to this global discussion. Thank you.

>> ELIZABETH THOMAS‑RAYNAUD: Thank you very much, Neil. Speaking of industry, we have the opportunity to hear from Cagatay. We'd like to hear about your engagement with policy stakeholders in the metaverse, particularly interested in the regional domain we've talked about from Africa, Middle East, and Turkiye that you're working with, and if you could just help us understand how regional and local considerations are being factored in the approaches you're taking. 

>> CAGATAY PEKYORUF: Thank you so much. And similarly, I will bring a regional view to the Middle East and Turkiye region. But before starting, I would like to recognise, like for us, we recognise that developing and implementing global standards for metaverse is a challenging task, because like there are different stakeholders involved. There is no one size fits all solution. But beyond that, there are regional challenges we all need to think about, and for the region I'm working for, Africa, Middle East, and Turkiye, as I mentioned, these challenges range from connectivity to gender divide and also language barrier.

And for some of these challenges, we think AI actually proposes a solution, may propose a solution. For example, language challenge. But for some others, we think we need to keep building stronger partnerships in the region and also initiatives for readiness for the communities in the region.

I would like to take a one step back before getting into the details of, like, what we are seeing in the region and, like, what we are doing so far, just to try to explain what are we focusing on when we think about the values and priorities that we have at Meta in designing the metaverse. We are actually focusing on five different areas. These are economic opportunity, privacy, safety and integrity of our users, and ‑‑ sorry, four areas ‑‑ and equity and inclusion.

And as I mentioned, like to ensure our communities in the region will be able to benefit from this technology, we already started our engagements with our stakeholders, both from civil society and also, of course, government stakeholders. In these active engagements, we carry the recommendations it our teams, but also, we initiated various efforts that focused on increasing local readiness. 

For us, the key term for our region is access, but it's not just connectivity, it's not just having affordable devices or having an Internet that is fast enough to reach this technology, but it goes beyond that, and access is also about digital literacy, trust, and safety of our users.

For the connectivity part, I'm sure you know, Meta has several investments, infrastructure initiatives, including 2 Africa Project, which is the largest and longest submarine cable system that will connect more than 33 countries across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. But on top of the connectivity efforts, we also started some programmatic efforts to make sure that our communities will be ready for the next iteration of the Internet. These efforts do include range of programmes which we trained over 350,000 small‑medium businesses, 5,300 Civil Society organizations, and 340,000 young people and educators in our region, Africa, Middle East, and Turkiye region, on digital literacy and also to increase their digital capacity and prepared them for developing digital experiences and careers.

Some of the examples that I may provide from these readiness projects that we have are, we started our first regional Metaverse Academy in Saudi Arabia where we conducted discovery workshops and we brought together more than 3,000 people. And there was a significant representation of female attendees in these workshops.

We also launched a skill‑up training in Saudi Arabia as well, where we trained 81 participants. More than half of them were women in this programme. And the first 50 graduates of this programme already created a project which showcased the pop‑up artists and cultural heritage in the Metaverse Museum. We also conducted a similar programme in our pan Africa Metaverse Summit, where we launched (?) which was designed to support African XR talent.

We do know that, like, there is still much that we can do and we will be doing as the business part of this technological development that we are all trying to contribute, and we also think that, like, it is very important for all of us to have this conversation today so everyone can benefit from this technology.  Thank you. 

>> ELIZABETH THOMAS‑RAYNAUD: Thank you very much for that. So, we've come full circle. I would like to ask you a question, vice governor. As you're pursuing the value‑based ecosystem of the Kyoto City, we've seen some of your initiatives, we'd like to understand better what your guidance would be for global policymakers and stakeholders that are considering such standards and aligned approaches and how those might assist you with your needs?

>> AKIMASA YAMASHITA: In creating this statement, we looked at Kyoto companies, which have long histories. And also, we had COP3 in this very place, we had COP3. At that time, I was still a manager of Kyoto Prefecture. And in that conference, using Internet, volunteer people transmitted the conversation or the meetings to the world.  And that information was very useful in discussing various issues around the world, and those volunteers went to Brazil for COP4 so that they can transmit the information through the Internet.

The reason why we came up with this statement ‑‑ this is like a beta version, so there are some missing pieces from this statement.  We want to incorporate these ideas into metaverse.  By propagating those ideas to the society, we can also understand what civil society is thinking, what kind of issues they are seeing; we can get feedback from the civil society by having this statement. That kind of activities can be done at the civil level or the community level. So, taking this as an opportunity, I think we can trigger those activities at the civil society.

I'm very pleased to have an opportunity to have comments in this place. Several years later, I want to announce what has happened since then. I think that kind of initiative can be very useful in realizing this kind of metaverse that is appropriate.

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Thank you for those additional thoughts. Camila, we're going to come back to you. You've heard a little bit about what that impetus is and different perspectives on how that's being pursued. What are the component parts? What are the elements that we should put in our thinking?

>> CAMILA CONTRI: Perfect. So, since we are talking about a human rights‑based technology, since we're talking about that we have to focus on inclusion, we should put people in the centre.  I agree that we need shared norms, we need shared standards, and maybe regulation. So, we need a common international understanding of that, but as I already highlighted, interesting regional context.

But the shared norms, I would highlight also three main topics: Openness, right on legislation and context. Openness in terms of gathering the potentialities of different and fragmented metaverse in an interconnected innovation development of the metaverse, through interoperability, obviously considering data protection rights and open access, not to have a fragmented metaverse.  Beyond openness, it is also important to guarantee people's access to rights and also to guarantee the compliance of already existing norms. So, sometimes when we are developing innovation, we are thinking about how we can build new standards, new norms, but we already have some norms that should be applied to them. For example, data protection legislation, competition legislation, and consumer law.

Context.  Because as I already mentioned, although we have to lead this discussion globally, we have to consider local and cultural and regional specificities. So, we ought to have a baseline that is sufficiently protective but also sufficiently broad, to be flexible to consider these contexts. And I have to say that this is a challenge on how can we develop this. But how can we develop this? The best thing to do is to gather different perspectives, as we are already doing right now. We have to have people from different regions, as we have in here. We have to have multistakeholder debates, multistakeholder development of these norms. We have to have engagement of companies, as we can see in this panel, it’s cooperation of government, through qualified international discussions facilitated by key actors, as OECD, and governance and participation. As the vice governor mentioned, we have to foment CSO, Civil Society, and technical sector participation on these discussions. And from Civil Society and the Global South, we remain super available to contribute to this innovative and inclusive future for a human rights‑based metaverse.

>> ELIZABETH THOMAS‑RAYNAUD: Thank you very much, Camila. I'm hearing some strong convergence on certain things. Pearse, can you share a little bit more with us about what's next for the Commission and how you're pursuing this approach to align globally?

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Thank you. Well, the strategy set out in the policy communication I mentioned, while it consists of ten sets of actions ‑‑ and don't worry, I'm not going to go through all of them ‑‑ but it does have ‑‑ it's articulated around four pillars, which I'll just mention briefly.  Is that okay? It's better. Well, good. I won't repeat myself.

Our strategy. Four pillars. Empowering people and reinforcing their skills are tired to develop innovative applications. Supporting a Web 4.0 industrial ecosystem to scale up European excellence in research, but also to foster innovation and to prevent fragmentation; supporting societal progress and virtual public services through to new public flagships in the area of smart cities and health respectively, which directly impact the quality of life of citizens. And then, the fourth one is governance at EU level and at international level to shape global standards for an open and interoperable virtual world and to promote Web 4.0 standards in line with our vision and standards.

So, let me just elaborate briefly on that last pillar, which I mentioned earlier as well, linked to the governance element. As I mentioned, we need to ensure that virtual worlds are designed as open and interoperable from the outset to ensure true empowerment and diverse participation. And that, of course, in itself, is a win‑win situation, because it can foster innovation, collaboration, and creativity.

And so, addressing the governance at the EU and global level will be needed to achieve that openness. It won't come naturally, and interoperability of virtual worlds, and it will be key to the future developments and uses, and also, it will be key to uptake, you must remember. In addition, we have to have international engagement on topics related to content and practice, which have proven already to be very difficult in some cases in the Internet.

We have issues such as access and creation against disinformation, censorship versus freedom of speech, surveillance against privacy, and so on. These are global challenges.

From our perspective, there's a clear commitment to continue to engage with the existing multistakeholder international governance institutions. We don't think we need to create new ones. In fact, this is now a challenge, but also a positive one to us to prove that the existing institutions, of course including the IGF, has the ability to adapt and grow along with the technology, and we believe that it can do so, but that's part of the discussions that will dominate all of this week. 

And also, in the same vein, to develop human rights‑based virtual worlds, we should rely on recognised instruments. It's not because the technology is new, that somehow, we have to build something new around it. That's an important lesson.

We already have the Declaration for the Future of the Internet with nearly 70 signatories, including as we saw clearly this morning, the Global South. And that sets out a future for the Internet that's open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure, and that builds on multistakeholder governance. So, in the same way we in Europe can add to that with our European Declaration of Digital Rights and Principles, but it's clearly that the views or the principles are shared wildly and widely, more to the point.

There has been a UN resolution in 2019 which affirms that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online. And of course, the governance for openness and interoperability can only be accompanied and implemented by the global multistakeholder community. A state‑led approach will not work. Of course, we have to rely on the technicians as well as Civil Society. IETF, ICANN, and the IGF, as well as the national and regional initiatives for that multistakeholder input, including ‑‑ because I've heard it so strongly from Camila ‑‑ the ability to adapt and take account of local and regional differences, cultural and otherwise.

So, as part of our contribution to this work, we are launching an expert group within the European Union to bring our Member States together with experts who share a common approach, but also, then, how does that translate practically into the design of virtual worlds in Web 4.0.

We also support the creation of a technical multistakeholder governance process to address essential aspects of virtual worlds. And when I say that, I want to clearly clarify that, of course, it's not to create new structures but to ensure that with the communities, the stakeholders, the groups, Civil Society, technical and otherwise, who we already bring together, that we will have a process within those fora that goes beyond the existing institutions, but only insofar as whether it's for standards or in terms of, for example, recruiting a new technical community in relation to new technologies that we would then feel that need to innovate.

And I would look at issues such as interoperability, rights management, and of course, the transactions in the virtual world and identity management, where we already have quite a lot going on in the European Union. So, that is how we see things evolving. We want to do it with our global partners, like‑minded Member States, but of course, the global multistakeholder community. Thank you.

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Thank you very much, Pearse. Professor Kozuka, we're going to turn to you to get a little bit more perspective on how Japan might use what you've done in your study group to inform and also how Japan might look at being informed by global standards developments in the metaverse. 

>> SOUICHIROU KOZUKA: Yeah, thank you very much. Well, in the first phase of our study group was concluded earlier this year, and we are now talking about the second stage. Thank you very much.  My slide is now shared.  During that second phase, we would consider about more concrete principles that reflect our approaches to the metaverse. And having heard the interventions today from the industry representatives to consumer representatives, and of course, from the government and Intergovernmental Organizations, I am now confident that everyone has more or less the same mind, so, number one, the metaverse should be based on the democratic values, that is pretty obvious, and also that people's rights and freedoms should be protected there.

But we also note that that does not mean that kind of unrestrained and a freedom without any rules or norms, but rather, it should be a balanced approach with appropriateness to prevent harms on any participants of the metaverse, and also, we need to respect the dignity of individuals and fairness and diversity. All these things have been voiced already from the participants of today's session. So, Japan's approach will not be much different from those.

Another thing that we heard today is that the importance of the international and a commitment. And we also think that having dialogues within my country will make up our contribution to the Global Forum, and we can then exchange our views and inputs, including, of course, this very early attempts of this province of Kyoto.  And already, they have ten principles, which is very important, and we can learn a lot from that. And so, those will also be examined and brought into the Global Forum.

And these values are very abstract and no one will dispute those, the importance of those, but we need to have more kind of concrete strategy to build up a rights‑based, value‑based metaverse. And there should be more, kind of a more concrete test and principles to make the metaverse trustworthy, if for example, contribute transparency and interoperability, all those things we are going to discuss, and carefully during the second phase of our task force. And then, of course, we are happy to bring them to the Global Forum and have dialogues with various stakeholders from various regions and various parts of the world so that we can have better approach to the metaverse.

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Thank you very much, professor. Cagatay, we're going to go to you now. If you could talk to us a little bit about how you're working to align with the stakeholders and what factors might impede that alignment?

>> CAGATAY PEKYoRUF: Yes, thank you. First, we continuously explore avenues to incorporate human rights into our services and products and practices. This also includes interoperability for metaverse and also ensuring AI serves communities fairly.  And in our engagements with stakeholders to make sure that, like, we can keep these promises.  We actually act from certain principles we have which are grounded in our commitments to our corporate human rights policy and also United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. And as part of this, we actually started conducting the Human Rights Due Diligence Effort on Metaverse, and potentially the next implications of that, which we are looking to share with the communities when it's ready to share.  And we also follow what is happening in the ecosystem and we are trying to be part of it as much as we can.

In relation to this, we support the principles setting the declaration for the future of the Internet, the Copenhagen Pledge on Tech and Democracy; we support and are trying to contribute to ongoing UN processes, the OECD, and other relevant multilateral and multistakeholder fora, including here, IGF, and Freedom Online Coalition. 

We also joined the XR Advisory Council, alongside policymakers, experts, and academics, to be able to advice and address key issues facing the ecosystem.  Also, we are one of the founding members of the XR Association, helping to build responsible XR. We are in addition to these, like being part of these venues, we are directly partnering with universities around the world to analyse everything from economy opportunity to ethics and responsible design in the metaverse. We have a two‑year, $50 million global XR programmes and research fund to support this critical external research and programmes, which will support students, creators, and small businesses and owners of this technology. We are hoping by being involved into this debate in the most possible extent, we will be able to consider everyone, and by understanding better how everyone may benefit from metaverse, hopefully, we'll be able to deliver an experience that different people may enjoy.

In these venues that we are trying to be part of, we always want to underline, this is not something that we can achieve by ourselves, and this requires a collaborative effort. Metaverse won't be a thing that is built by one company. There are like many players also in the business side, and we won't be the ones setting the rules for how it works. But obviously, we are in a position where we can contribute greatly. And we, like not to repeat, but like, we support the interconnectedness of these virtual spaces, which will require new standards, norms, technical specifications. And of course, these can only be agreed collaboratively through bodies like Metaverse Standards Forum or through forums like this one. 

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Thank you very much for that perspective. We're going to move online now, back to you, Neil. We'd like to get a sense, as you're working across industry on this question. You mentioned the size of your membership and working on a broader, like horizontal effort. From that perspective, can you give us an idea of what important actions governments can take to support these efforts and alignment?

>> NEIL TREVETT: Yes, absolutely. This has been a really interesting discussion, so, thank you, everyone.  I think there were three points I'd like to make.

Firstly, we have seen in the Metaverse Standards Forum that many industries, of course, are very enthused by the potential benefits of this thing we're calling the metaverse, but importantly, they are also very aware of the increased dangers of these powerful technologies that we're bringing together to issues such as privacy and security, perhaps sensitized by some of the issues created by today's social media landscape, for example. And I think we've seen, therefore, that industry is paying close attention to the importance of creating a safe and inclusive metaverse. After all, no one's interests are served at all if the metaverse is not a platform that users both enjoy and can trust.

So, I think this creates the openness in industry to the idea that the relationship between industry and government can and should be cooperative, as only legislation and technology working together is going to create and complete this metaverse puzzle. The relationship does not have to be combative. Ideally, legislation can create a necessary safe space where technical innovation can thrive within agreed guide rails. And of course, therefore, in a collaborative way to foster collaboration between industry and legislators is early cooperation and dialogue on the technology, the risks and opportunities, to build that mutual understanding. If the Forum can help foster that kind of constructive discussion, working with the other initiatives that are represented here, that's something we'd very much welcome, of course.

And lastly, my own personal journey through the forum. Interoperability is often a term used in the context of technical standards, technical interoperability, but through the discussions in the forum, I've come to understand that interoperability is not just important in technical standards; legislative interoperability is important as well because the metaverse is going to be deployed globally. We, hopefully, can strive for as much consistency as possible across different legislative domains, while, of course, being sensitive to regional needs, as has been discussed here. 

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Thank you. Thank you, Neil. So, Audrey, we're going to give you the last word on this panel. You've heard the different streams of work in the different perspectives on this panel, and we were wanting to look a little bit more at what OECD current priority actions might contribute to the pursuit. And also, we've heard about different institutions and not a need for additional institutions. So, how can it help from that perspective?

>> AUDREY PLONK: So, it strikes me that at a fairly basic level, we need some terminology cleanup and some definitional attention, which is something that we actually spend a lot of time doing at the OECD. It tends to be the least glamorous part of our work, not that it's very glamorous. But I do think just listening to all of the interventions, even our own, you know, the way that we describe this technology, I think we've got to get a little bit more grounded in what we mean and what we're talking about, because without that, it's difficult to see where there are gaps. And I think there's lot of consensus about not creating new things that are duplicative of old things because that's an easy thing to agree to. It's easy to agree not to duplicate. It's hard to understand if you're duplicating or not. And so, I think without some policy definitions, which can, of course, be based on technical definitions, but generally, in the policy space, we need policy‑understandable definitions as well. It seems like there's some really important foundational work to be done there and that that can be an important input to policy coherence or interoperability, as Neil just said. I think we obviously very much believe in sort of policy interoperability or cohesiveness, but usually, that requires some foundational definitional coherence as well, and it strikes me that we might be lacking that a bit on this topic, I think. So, that's one area of work.

Then I think the other thing to say is that I do think that a deeper dive, whether it's a taxonomy or a benchmarking or a stock‑taking of something, of what the differences are. Because you know, just the proliferation of guidance or principles or interpretation of values relative to a new technology sounds nice, but I think it's only really useful if we know what's different and what's unique here. And I think that gets a little bit back to the definition, and then it gets to sort of understanding some of maybe the risk areas that are unique and the opportunity areas that are unique and what we already have that applies. I think there's lots of examples of things and guidance that we have that certainly apply in the metaverse ‑‑ or in the immersive world ‑‑ and the question of what gaps we have, you know.

And if I just look at some of the principles from Kyoto, I would say maybe some of those could be thought about a little bit. But at least from where we sit, there are things we haven't really thought about, at least in that way. So, I think some mapping of how existing things apply to see where there are some gaps and what might be needed. But certainly, just, again, the starting point for any kind of international cooperation and coherence is going to be definitions, and I heard a lot of different terms. We use a lot of different terms. So, that really stood out to me and perhaps an area where we can help move the collective understanding in the policy space for building on what other technical standardization organizations are already doing. Thanks.

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: All right. So, now the speakers are known to us. They are amongst you all. Who would like to take the floor, either to ask a question or contribute something? You've got a microphone in front of you. I'll maybe ask you. I see two of you at this table and two here. Great. We'll go around like that.  Please. 

>> AUDIENCE: First of all, thank you for all the panelists here and online. It was really an interesting discussion. And I think I would like to ‑‑

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Can you introduce yourself so everybody knows ‑‑

>> AUDIENCE: Yes, my name is Paula, I'm Peruvian, a tech policy advisor, now Candidate of Master Public Policy at Oxford, but I am a former advisor at the Peruvian government.  And actually, I wanted to touch a point that I think we discussed, but very, very lightly, which is capacity‑building of policymakers and people in government.

We are navigating a decade of digital ‑‑ actually, the digital era. And I would like to hear from the panelists, any of you that would like to contribute, how in their organization working towards these. We've read different documents, recently the guidelines around generative AI that was published by the OECD. It's hard, for instance, to identify which content has been developed by AI or by humans. It is hard to tackle this information in the sense as well. But if policymakers that are developing these rules do not have the operability skills or really don't know how to navigate these, how can we reach this consensus, this collaboration that we're looking for?

I would love to hear from Mr. Pearse, if it's possible, to hear the European perspective. As a Latin American, our countries are usually looking at what is happening in Europe, because we usually tend to grab human‑centered positions as the European Union does, so that would be my question. Thank you so much.

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Thank you very much. I'm going to take a few questions, and then we'll come back to our panel for that. I see there's one here, and then I'm going to come over here. 

>> ERIC HAWKINSON: Hello, there. My name is Eric Hawkinson. I'm actually a local here in Kyoto, an immersive learning specialist doing augmented reality in this context. This is all great foundational work and conversations we're in here, but I feel like a lot of the times, working this technology the last 10‑20 years, a lot of the incentive structures are somehow kind of stacked against a lot of the things that we talked about here today, right? So, inclusivity, interoperability and things like that. I would like to try to get the panel to kind of frame their conversation in how likely all of these things are to be successful, and success being kind of comparing it to the wave of social media or other technologies that have come in the past, and also where the low‑hanging fruit is. Where are we likely to get or see the most opportunities for success around these things? And where exactly do we need to focus most of our efforts to get more of these things to come to actualization? Thanks. 

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Okay, I do see another question on this side. We'll go here and then we'll come over here, if you bear with me.

>> MICHAEL KARANICOLAS: Hi, I'm Michael Karanicolas, the Executive Director of the UCLA Institute for Technology Law and Policy. I wanted to pick up where I think Ms. Plonk left off, and wondered if any of the other panelists wanted to drill down more deeply into the specific content or privacy challenges that you might have identified which are either novel to extended reality or exacerbated by these new technologies, and I ask because my research centre is going to be starting a project in January on exactly that. So, if you're working on that ‑‑ if you've already figured that out, you'll save me some time, but wanted to figure out where the state of research is.

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: All right. Over to you. 

>> AUDIENCE: I'm a retired professor from university and a member of CSAC. I have a question for Neil on standards. How the collaboration forum is collaborating existing traditional Internet standardization bodies, like the IGF, the World Wide Web Consortium and ITU‑T. Thank you.

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: I'm going to take one more question and then I'll give our panelists an opportunity to respond. Sir?

>> AUDIENCE: All right, thank you. My name is Steve Park. I am the Head of Public Policy for (?) for APAC region. It was great hearing about the work that the Japanese government has done for the metaverse guidelines, and particularly on page 2 of your slide, Professor, you're talking about the need to balance between freedom and rules. I think that's a very important point that was mentioned by other panelists as well, particularly considering that there isn't necessarily a consensus on even democratic values. Freedom of speech is important for all democracies, but some countries enforce that differently than other countries, balancing it with things like personal reputation or other issues such as election laws, for example. So, we would love to hear what the Japanese government has in mind to bring that consensus. Perhaps you would consider something like data free flow of trust for the DFFT, like initiative for the metaverse. So, we would love to hear that. Thank you.

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: All right. So, who would like to come back on the question of how IOs are working on capacity‑building? I think maybe Audrey and Pearse.

>> AUDREY PLONK: Yeah, if I can merge an answer to a couple of the questions and then happy to pass on.  So, yes. So, in our research, we see that, basically, 80% of the headsets ‑‑ if we're just in the virtual reality space ‑‑ again, I'm back to my definitional issues ‑‑ but in VR. VR headsets today are sold by ‑‑ about 80% of them are sold ‑‑ 80%‑90%, by social media companies, basically. So, if you're looking at what is the trajectory of that piece of the technology, which again, I'm not trying to extrapolate it out to all immersive technology because there's a bunch of different categories and we have done our own research and have our own papers coming forward, but just to say that, you know, if you just look at who's building the things and who's buying them, you know, it does sort of lead you down the path of this is a game or this is the path of, you know, it's an environment in which we're extending social media and gaming, and to some degree, it's not surprising, because a lot of the investment that came into this came from the gaming industry and VR.  So, I think the data that we have now, you know, that's where it sits, and there's huge market concentration. We know that.  10% of the VR headsets are sold by a bunch of different players, and then you know, the vast majority are sold by three, one very big one, Meta, which is not very surprising to anyone here. So that's clear in terms of the market dynamics.

The question of whether we expect to see it taken up in a broader, more democratic, you know, I don't know. I think the question is maybe more of what are the conditions that would make that possible in sectors in which it's viable. Like, where should the technology be used, for what purposes, and how do you get it there, beyond this social media use, which is clearly where we're sitting today, based on what we have. So, that's the short answer that I can offer, which is probably all things you already know, given where you're sitting, but it would be interesting to hear your reaction.

To colleague from the United States, over there. So, in the privacy space, we're doing some work on this as well. I mean, I think there's a lot of interesting data about just how much new types of personal data are collected in these virtual environments, particularly around body movement, around eye movements, and it's just so much more and so much more frequently than what we're used to thinking about in classic data protection.

And you know, we have some ‑‑ at least it's a couple years old now ‑‑ but 20 minutes in a virtual reality simulation leaves just under 2 million unique recordings of body language, in 20 minutes. So, it's a fantastic scale that we're not used to coping with, I think, probably, from a private‑protecting perspective or even from a legal perspective, and certainly, from a policy perspective before. So, there's also non‑verbal communication, eye movement, all kinds of psychological types of data that don't necessarily come through in the classic ways that we've used technology. So, I think that's a big category which people are paying attention to in the privacy space, and we're certainly paying attention to now.

We have some research coming out next year that looks broadly, just focusing on virtual reality, that look broadly into pros and cons, and in the privacy space, it details out some of that. I won't take time to deeply go into it here, but I suspect for the privacy community, I imagine you're all thinking about that, because there's some pretty good academic research around it that we've looked at and started to sort of dive a little bit into the questions of what does that mean, relative to sort of data minimization or data limitation, sort of classic principles of privacy and data protection that this may very well challenge.

So, I think how can IOs help? At least at the OECD, we do a few things. We do research. We try to make complicated things more accessible and understandable to policymakers. We do our own data gathering and empirical work. We also make recommendations in policy space. So, I think when there's an area where something connects to where we have competency, we can help sort of bring those things together and bring a policy community to the table to understand and talk about it in a sort of like‑minded way, because our membership at its base is democratic, you know, market economies that tend to at least think about Democratic values in a similar way. But obviously, this technology affects the broad world, and so also, that's why we have the Global Forum, so we can also work with a broader stakeholder set, which brings you back maybe to the last question around, you know, yeah, values are values, but they're not always shared.

And I think there's an important distinction between where you can get maybe agreement on a common approach to something or where you can work together to share information and still, even if you don't have a common approach or even if you take different approaches, to still find ways to work together and maybe learn from each other. It's a complicated environment that we live in today to do that, and it's true that, you know, values can vary across cultures and societies. And so, that's I think why, at least in the OECD context, we try to focus on things that are shared, where countries have a common approach, but I think there's other work beyond sort of making recommendations and having hard agreements, where a broader community can participate.

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Thanks, Audrey. So, I'm going to ask Pearse to come in on the question that you want. I'm also going to jump to Japan and Neil. We've got a few minutes left. So, if you can be quick. Thank you. 

>> PEARSE O'DONOHUE: Yes, indeed. I couldn't possibly answer all of the questions, but in relation to what I could add value and where I was particularly addressed.

On capacity‑building, I can give a short answer in that we're nowhere in terms of specifically capacity‑building in relation to virtual worlds of the metaverse, but I think that's what you see in our communication. We're trying to establish that capacity‑building an understanding. One point I referred to which is particularly important ‑‑ do the communities, including in particular the technical community, maybe the private sector, but also civil society, do we have everybody in the room? There may be more that we need to bring in specifically for virtual worlds. And we are learning.

On the standardization, it's the same thing, do we understand the technology? Are we working with the people who may understand the technology in order to actually have something effective on standards? But all of it will, as I have said, I hope made it clear, will be measured against the human‑centric approach, human values, human rights.

And then very quickly, and I'll try to be telegraphic to Michael from UCLA ‑‑ in our work, but this is not definitive ‑‑ we have identified issues, particularly as Audrey was saying with regard to the privacy space, but the functioning of avatars, for example, with regard to privacy, the safety of data. We have an issue with regard to virtual assets. We're still trying to keep up with cryptocurrency, et cetera, and virtual assets will make that much more complex.

And then, finally, it's actually the health aspects, and particularly of the wearer of that particular equipment. And that health discussion has to include psychological well‑being. So, if, like me, you had teenage children 20 years ago, it was a problem of how many hours do they spend video gaming. If you translate that problem to the virtual worlds, it could be that the psychological socialization problems could be, you know, magnified enormously. So, those are three issues. That's not a definitive list, and of course, we don't have the definitive answer. Thank you.

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Thank you, professor. 

>> SOUICHIROU KOZUKA: Thank you very much. And thank you for the question. Freedom faces the very basis of democratic society. That is very obvious and no one doubts that. On the other hand, if the metaverse becomes a fora for disinformation and consumer fraud, it is also that no one wants that to take place. So, in that sense, it is quite clear that we need to have some norms, social norms, acceptable to the society.

The important thing is that we shouldn't try to find out the answer or the correct balance on the issue. If we close the discussions on how to get the balance of the norm and the freedom, then that is not democracy. We understand that democracy is after all the continuation of the dialogues among the citizens, and that is a very important thing. And that's about capacity‑building. You need to come to Kyoto province and work with the local government and the local expert. To be more serious, an expertise needs to be built within the dialogues with the industry and within dialogues with the users. It should not be only with the policy at the high level. That is what I thought. Thank you.

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Thank you. So, I think we're using up a bit of a five‑minute grace period here. Thank you for your indulgence, but since we got questions, it's really great that we can just come back on them. Neil, I'm going to call on you for the question about how you're collaborating with other technical organizations.

>> NEIL TREVETT: Yes. I'll make it quick. So, thank you for the question. It's a great question. So, broadly, the standards landscape, I think you can divide it into two classes of standardization organizations. There is the industry consortia, like W3C, Open Geospatial Consortium, Cronos Group and many others. The forum, I think, has a clear relationship to those that many are already members and we're already busy gathering/coordinating requirements, helping that process in generating visibility for those organizations where it's relevant to the metaverse.

Of course, there were many larger organizations that you mentioned that are working on initiatives, too that are valuable, ISO, ITU, there are a lot of initiatives, and that can be confusing how many there are, and there are overlaps. And so, to be honest, we are still figuring out how to the Forum can best add value, how we can add value and if we can add value to complement the larger organizations and initiatives.

We have had collaborative conversations with ITU, ISO and IEEE, who are looking at how to leverage a industry‑connected agile organization that is deliberately very different to those much larger and well‑established organizations. We're not trying to compete with anyone. We're just here trying to help where we can, and we would welcome that discussion. And if we can be helpful, please, we'd love to talk. 

>> Elizabeth Thomas‑Raynaud: Wonderful. So, thank you very much, everyone, for participating today. We really appreciated the discussion. Thank you to our esteemed panelists and informed panelists for contributing and to the co‑organizers of Japan. I'm going to spare you a summary and hope that you have all integrated what we've learned, since we're running over time, but many thanks. And we'll look forward to seeing you at other Global Forum occasions and the rest of the week at the IGF. Take care.