This talk will explore the politics that underpins the merging of humans and machines through narratives of love, sex and relationship with robots and AI. Drawing on ideas developed in her forthcoming book, Sex Robots: The End of Love (due to be published in 2023), this talk will examine the academic and business frameworks that mix humans with property forms.

Kathleen Richardson is professor of ethics and culture of robots and AI at De Montfort University. She is director of WERAID (Women, Ethics, Robots, AI and Data) a new research group at DMU. She is author of An Anthropology of Robots and AI: Annihilation Anxiety and Machines (2015) and Challenging Sociality: An Anthropology of Attachment, Autism and Robots (2018). In addition to her academic work she is founder of the Campaign Against Porn Robots (formerly Sex) and supports feminist organisations campaigning for rights of women and girls.