Katherine 'Kate' Irene Maynard Darling (January 27, 1982) is an American-Swiss academic. She works on the legal and ethical implications of technology. As of 2019, she is a Research Specialist at the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

Academic career

Darling was born in the US, but grew up in

Basel, Switzerland Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city (after Zurich and Geneva), with ...

. Darling received degrees in Economics and Law from the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis''; German: ''Universität Basel'') is a public research university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest univ ...

. After completing her 2014 dissertation titled ''Copyright and new technologies: theoretical and empirical analysis of copyright transfers and content production incentives ''at

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

, Darling returned to the US, to teach a

robot ethics Robot ethics, sometimes known as "roboethics", concerns ethical problems that occur with robots, such as whether robots pose a threat to humans in the long or short run, whether some ''uses'' of robots are problematic (such as in healthcare or as ...

course at

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

with

Lawrence Lessig Lester Lawrence "Larry" Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvar ...

. In Darling's robot ethics course, she touches upon how law and robotics work together. However, she primarily focuses on the legal and social issues with robotics. Darling is a former fellow at Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, the Yale Information Society Project and the Center for Law & Economics. Darling has an honorary doctorate of sciences from

Middlebury College Middlebury College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Middlebury, Vermont, United States. Founded in 1800 by Congregationalism in the United States, Congregationalists, Middlebury w ...

. Darling has published academic work on topics such as human-robot interaction and, in her thesis, copyright transfer. She was awarded with a Mark T Banner Award in Intellectual Property.

References

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Living people 1982 births University of Basel alumni ETH Zurich alumni Harvard Law School faculty Yale University faculty MIT School of Architecture and Planning faculty 21st-century American lawyers Artificial intelligence ethicists 21st-century Swiss lawyers MIT Media Lab people {{US-academic-scientist-stub