Kate Darling

Timeline

1. 1982–2014

   Law, economics and an ETH doctorate

   Born in the US in 1982, she grows up in Basel, Switzerland, earns degrees in economics and law at the University of Basel, and graduates from law school with honors. In 2014, she completes an ETH Zurich doctoral dissertation on copyright transfers and incentives for content production.

2. By 2013

   Robot rights at Harvard Law

   By March 2013, she is an intellectual property research specialist at the MIT Media Lab and has co-taught a "Robot Rights" course at Harvard Law School with Lawrence Lessig. She also writes a paper, "Extending Legal Rights to Social Robots", which asks whether society should protect robots that people connect with on a social level.

3. 2013

   The Pleo dinosaur workshop

   In 2013, she and technology activist Hannes Gassert run a workshop in Geneva in which four groups are asked to "kill" Pleo robot dinosaurs with an axe and other tools. After 1.5 hours of interaction, none of the groups can kill its Pleo, and only one is destroyed in the end.

4. 2015

   The empathic concern study

   In November 2015, she publishes a RO-MAN paper with Palash Nandy and Cynthia Breazeal on how people respond when asked to strike a simple robotic object. People with high empathic concern hesitate to strike the robots, most strongly when the robots come with stories.

5. 2017

   A Banner Award and honorary doctorate

   In 2017, the American Bar Association gives her the Mark T. Banner Award in intellectual property. Middlebury College awards her an honorary Doctor of Science at its 2017 commencement, naming her an expert on social robotics, intellectual property law, and the economic incentives of copyright and patent systems.

6. 2021

   The New Breed

   Henry Holt publishes her book The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals About Our Future with Robots in 2021. It compares robots with animals, long used for work, weaponry and companionship, and challenges the idea that robots will soon replace humans in the workforce.

7. September 2023

   Ethics team at the AI Institute

   In September 2023, the Boston Dynamics AI Institute, launched by Hyundai Motor Group in May 2022, hires her from the MIT Media Lab to lead its study of the ethics and societal impact of robotics and AI. Her new team plans studies and experiments that generate data for ethics and policy decisions.

8. As of October 2026

   Ethics research at the RAI Institute

   She leads the Robotics, Ethics & Society research team at the Robotics and AI (RAI) Institute, after a decade and a half of studying the emotional connection between people and lifelike machines at the MIT Media Lab. In 2026, she gives the Spring Wilson Lecture at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy on how emotion, design and power shape people's relationship with robots and AI.