Kate Darling
A leading expert in robot ethics, Kate Darling Ph.D is a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She heads the Boston Dynamics AI Institute’s study of ethics and societal impact, where she oversees a team of researchers who explore key societal questions related to the development of intelligent robots.
She investigates the emotional connection between people and life-like machines, seeking to influence technology design and policy direction. Darling’s writing and research anticipate difficult questions that lawmakers, engineers and the wider public will need to address as human-robot relationships evolve in the coming decades.
She has a background in law and economics as well as intellectual property. Darling has researched economic incentives in copyright and patent systems and has taken a role as intellectual property expert at multiple academic and private institutions. Named one of the “Women in Robotics You Need to Know About” by Robohub, she has been a contributing writer to BBC Science Focus, Robohub, and IEEE Spectrum. She is also the author of the book “The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals About Our Future with Robots”, exploring how building diverse relationships with robots could be the key to making our future with robotic technology work.
Her passion for technology and robots has led her to interdisciplinary fields. She increasingly works at the intersection of law and robotics, with a focus on legal and social issues. Darling is a former Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and the Yale Information Society Project. She is also an affiliate at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
Darling’s work has been featured in Vogue, The New Yorker, The Guardian, BBC, NPR, PBS, The Boston Globe, Forbes, CBC, WIRED magazine, Boston Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, Die Zeit, The Japan Times, and more. She is a contributing writer to Robohub and IEEE Spectrum.
Darling graduated from law school with honors and holds a Doctor of Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and an honorary doctorate of sciences from Middlebury College. In 2017, the American Bar Association honored her legal work with the Mark T. Banner award in Intellectual Property. She is the caretaker for several domestic robots, including her Pleos Yochai, Peter, and Mr. Spaghetti.