"Instead of fearing the rise of the machines, we could, quite literally, embrace them." Kate Devlin
Kate Devlin is a computer scientist, sex robot theorist, Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Artificial Intelligence at King’s College London, and the author of Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots.
Kate studied archaeology at university and it was there that she developed her interest in computing. She created 3D models of archaeological sites, such as Pompeii, and rendered them with detailed lighting effects in an attempt to recreate the contemporary light sources used at these sites.
She co-chaired the International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots in 2016, and in the same year convened the UK’s first sex tech hackathon, where thinkers of all stripes gathered to pool ideas on the relationship between sex, intimacy, and artificial partners.
Kate has been sympathetic to the notion of human sex with robots, raising for example sex robots’ potential benefits as sources of companionship for the elderly and as research assets in the study of sex offender psychology. She’s also explored sex robots’ capacity to consent to intercourse.
"One of Devlin's achievements is to humanise the sex robot makers and users - we are invited not to laugh at them, but to understand them." The Times