By Jordi Pérez Colomé

Kate Darling, who studies the legal, social and ethical effects of robots at the MIT Media Lab, has spent years observing the interactions between humans and robots; she even has several at her house. Regarding the future of the artificial intelligence revolution, her answers could be considered evasive: “It’s all so speculative,” she says, “that it’s hard to figure out.” Still, the timing could not be better for her work, as we have never been so close to coexisting with robots. “It’s a very exciting time to be alive, I feel very fortunate to be experiencing all of this,” she reflects.

Darling is the author of The New Breed, where she states that the best comparison to understand what a robot is is animals, not humans. In this conversation with EL PAÍS, she tries to shed some light on the enormous novelty that language models like ChatGPT represent.