In last week’s, our group got a lot of real and effective feedback, and the one that struck me the most was from our mentor Sasha:

Sasha believes that we need to consider our projects from different people’s perspectives, taking into account Racial issues. Ethical issues. For example, we set up the Ai Verbal Toy only in the context of the heroine of our scenario, and we set up the Ai Verbal Toy as a fluffy bear, but we didn’t take into account children’s preferences. Self-gender identity (he/she/they/non-binary, etc.), their personal circumstances (discrimination, exclusion, bullying, etc.) are appropriate for assessment and treatment with a bear?

The situation we envisage must be one that takes into account the widest possible range of people and applies to a wide range of people.

We need to act as researchers, gather the opinions of different stakeholders, speculate on how art therapy will work with Ai and XR in the next decade based on reality and research, and objectively evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of the project.

Meanwhile, Sasha’s view on the fact that after we interviewed Mark, who are from the UCL Computer Science department, we moved everything up by five years is that he understands very well that Mark, as a technician, thinks that Ai technology will be ready by then, but we, as future scenario setters, we should consider more comprehensively whether the government, society, schools, the economy and other environmental conditions will allow us to use Ai and XR in this way, for example, if we want to invest in art therapy programmes and Ai and XR equipment in schools, will the government be willing to invest in the funds? The society’s acceptance of Ai and XR, whether parents are willing to let their children have close contact with the technology, whether the teachers in the school think that such behaviour is feasible, and whether the teachers are willing to cooperate?

These are all things we need to take into account, and only by constantly thinking at a deeper level can we make our solutions better and realistic.