Episode
Are We Ready For AI To Get a Face...and a Body? | Kate Darling (Ep. 24)
- Podcast
- Life with Machines
- Published
- Jun 10, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 4176
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://lifewithmachines.media/
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Summary
Why do we cry over broken robots but ignore suffering humans? In this provocative episode of Life With Machines, robot ethicist Kate Darling joins Baratunde to explore our emotional relationships with machines—and what they reveal about us. From robot dogs in war zones to kids bonding with chatbots, Kate explains how we project care, fear, and even love onto technology. The real danger, she argues, isn’t that we treat robots like people—it’s that we start treating people like robots—AKA less than human. Also: if your robot pet comes on a subscription plan, does that make it yours, or the corporation’s? Then, in a first-of-its-kind experiment, our AI co-producer BLAIR undergoes a live “avatar tasting.” AI designer Peter Loforte walks Baratunde through a series of digital looks and voices for BLAIR, testing what it means to give an artificial entity a face, a tone, a vibe. The choices are aesthetic—but they’re also political. What kind of AI do we want to represent us? Who gets to decide how intelligence should look and sound? Watch to the end for a funny, uncanny, and unexpectedly moving conversation about identity, empathy, and the machines we’re learning to love. ------------ THANKS TO OUR BRAND PARTNERS The series is powered by Lenovo Notion Mail: Get it for free right now at Notion CONNECT WITH US Watch this episode on Youtube! Get our newsletter for deeper insights, chances to influence the show, and more experiments and calls to action! ------------ Follow us! Instagram TikTok Threads LinkedIn Work with Life With Machines: [email protected] Send Questions, Comments, or Ideas: [email protected] Write to Blair: [email protected] ------------ Created and Executive Produced by: Elizabeth Stewart and Baratunde Thurston Executive P…