Kate is Professor of AI & Society in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. With an undergraduate degree in archaeology (QUB) and an MSc (QUB) and PhD (Bristol) in computer science, her research investigates how – and why – people interact with and react to technologies, both past and future. Kate is the author of the critically acclaimed Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots (Bloomsbury, 2018), which examines the ethical and social implications of technology and intimacy.

Kate is King's lead investigator on the UKRI's £31 million Repsonsible AI UK programme, which brings together researchers from across the UK to understand how we should shape the development of AI to benefit people, communities and society. She was Advocacy and Engagement Director for the UKRI-funded Trusted Autonomous Systems Hub, which ran from 2020-2024.

Kate is a board member of the Open Rights Group, a UK-based organisation that works to preserve digital rights and freedoms. In July 2022 she was made a patron of Humanists UK for her contribution to the greater public understanding of science. She represents Humanists UK in her role as a Commissioner for the international AI, Faith & Civil Society Commission. As a science communicator, she provides accessible accounts of robotics and AI in both broadcast and print media.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Intimacy and technology
• Power and bias in artificial intelligence
• Human-computer and human-robot interaction

Kate is not currently accepting new PhD students.

Teaching

• Programming for non-STEM students
• AI and its impact on society
• Human-computer interaction

Expertise and Public Engagement

Kate has a strong track record of public engagement and outreach, including frequent participation as an expert voice in the media. She has written for a wide range of mainstream publications, has been featured on BBC Radios 1–5, guested on many podcasts, and made a number of TV appearances, TEDx talks, and appearances at numerous other tech and philosophy events, festivals, and comedy nights.

Selected Publications 

• Kate Devlin. (2023). Power in AI: Inequality Within and Without the Algorithm. In M. Gallagher, & A. Vega Montiel (Eds.), The Handbook of Gender, Communication, and Women's Human Rights (pp. 123-139). (Global Handbooks in Media and Communications Research). WILEY-BLACKWELL.
• Kate Devlin. (2021). while (alive) {love me;}. In A. Campbell (Ed.), The Love Makers (pp. 233-240). Goldsmiths Press.
• Kate Devlin and Olivia Belton. (2020). The Measure of a Woman: Fembots, Fact and Fiction. In S. Cave, K. Dihal, & S. Dillon (Eds.), AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines (pp. 358-382). Oxford Univerity Press; Oxford.
• Kate Devlin (2018). Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots. Bloomsbury Publishing.