Robot ethicist Kate Darling offers a nuanced and smart take on our relationships to robots and the increasing presence they will have in our lives. From a social, legal, and ethical perspective, she shows that our current ways of thinking don’t leave room for the robot technology that is soon to become part of our everyday routines. Robots are likely to supplement, rather than replace, our own skills and relationships.

Darling also considers our history of incorporating animals into our work, transportation, military, and even families, and shows how we already have a solid basis for how to contend with, and navigate our future with robots.

Dr. Kate Darling works at the intersection of law, ethics and robotics; as a researcher at MIT Media Lab, author and intellectual property policy advisor. Her work with Dr. Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and other institutions explores the difficult questions that lawmakers, engineers, and the wider public will need to address as human-robot relationships evolve in the coming decades.

Darling's work is widely published and covered in the media; and her new book is The New Breed: What Our History With Animals Reveals About Our Future With Robots.