Professor of Ethics and Culture of Robots and AI, De Montfort University. Founder, Campaign Against Sex Robots. PhD in Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
Kathleen Richardson is Professor of Ethics and Culture of Robots and AI at De Montfort University, a leading voice on how robotics and AI shape human relationships, autonomy, and dignity. Her work bridges technical systems and their social consequences for policymakers, industry, and the public. She founded the Campaign Against Sex Robots, a globally discussed initiative that reframed debates on the commodification of intimacy and the ethics of human-machine interaction.
Richardson is the author of "An Anthropology of Robots and AI: Annihilation Anxiety and Machines" and co-editor of "Man-Made Woman: The Sexual Politics of Sex Dolls and Sex Robots." Richardson earned her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, conducted fieldwork in MIT robotics labs, and held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCL. She has also contributed to Europe-wide projects on therapeutic robotics (DREAM). This blend of elite research credentials and public-interest advocacy makes her a uniquely credible guide for founders, investors, researchers, and policymakers working to align AI with human values.
Richardson began by tracing the history of how people imagine robots: originally conceived as labor replacements, they have increasingly been positioned as companions and caregivers. This shift in design intent, she argued, is not neutral. When robots are designed to simulate intimacy, they raise fundamental questions about what relationships are, who benefits from the illusion, and whose humanity is being diminished in the process.
The session focused on the risks of distorted attachment and anthropomorphism. AI companions and sex robots are marketed as solutions to loneliness, but Richardson's research suggests the opposite effect: they normalize one-sided relationships that require no reciprocity, no vulnerability, and no genuine care. Women and marginalized groups bear a disproportionate share of the cost when this dynamic is scaled, because the templates for robot "companions" overwhelmingly reproduce existing patterns of exploitation and commodification.
She closed by connecting these seemingly personal-scale concerns to systemic ones. When a society normalizes inanimate relationships, it reshapes expectations of human connection at the population level. Democratic participation, empathy, and collective action all depend on people being able to form genuine bonds. The existential threat in her title is not a robot uprising but a quieter erosion: a world in which people are progressively more isolated, more manipulable, and less capable of the solidarity that human flourishing requires.
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