Kate Darling is a leading expert in robot ethics and a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, where she investigates social robotics and conducts experimental studies on human-robot interaction, seeking to influence technology design and policy direction. She is the author of The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals About Our Future with Robots (2021).
Darling has a background in law and economics and intellectual property and currently serves as intellectual property policy advisor to the director of the MIT Media Lab. Co-teaching a robot ethics course at Harvard Law School led her to work at the intersection of law and robotics. She is a former Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and the Yale Information Society Project, and is also an affiliate at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
Darling’s work has been featured in a number of publications and media outlets, including Vogue, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, Forbes, Wired, The Atlantic, Slate, Die Zeit, The Japan Times, and the BBC, NPR, and PBS. She has a law degree and a doctorate 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 awarded her the Mark T. Banner award in Intellectual Property.
