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The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots
Price $29.99Hardcover
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Kate Darling
Harvard Book Store's virtual event series, the Harvard University Division of Science, and the Harvard Library welcome KATE DARLING—a Research Specialist at the MIT Media Lab and a leading expert in robot ethics—for a discussion of her book The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots. She will be joined in conversation by RANA EL KALIOUBY, co-Founder and CEO of Affectiva and author of Girl Decoded: A Scientist’s Quest to Reclaim Our Humanity by Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Technology.
There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, and that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better. 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. So if we consider our history of incorporating animals into our work, transportation, military, and even families, we actually have a solid basis for how to contend with this future.
A deeply original analysis of our technological future and the ethical dilemmas that await us, The New Breed explains how the treatment of machines can reveal a new understanding of our own history, our own systems and how we relate—not just to non-humans, but also to each other.
