This TED Talk discussed how humans formed emotional connections with robots. Kate Darling explained how people have make connections with robots specially if they have humanistic faces or if they look like animals. She explained how she ha a dinosaur robot that would move and if you were to hold it upside down, it would cry. She said that even though she knew how the robot worked, seeing that robot reaction made her uncomfortable. In 2007, there was a case where the military was testing robots shaped like a stick insect with legs coming off designed to diffuse minefields. The colonel in charge of the experiment decided to call the testing off because it was “too inhumane to watch the robot drag itself through the minefield”.  People have been empathizing with robots in many ways. However, Darling is questioning whether people can not only empathize with robots, but can robots change people’s empathy? Robots have the potential of changing people’s behavior.

Kate Darling’s speech was delivered in a satisfactory manner. Her talk had a nice flow with a good structure. She gave personal examples and a lot of supporting evidence to help convey her main idea. I like that she asked a lot of direct questions to the audience because I felt that it made the speech a lot more personal. Darling had a good connection with the audience since the start by keeping them engaged with a fun personal story and a joke. She knew when to switch the mood of the talk from funny to serious to concerned and optimistic about the future. She used visuals that aided her speech by showing pictures of the different robots and people’s reactions. It felt a little awkward to see her standing in the same spot without moving her feet at all, but she used a lot of hand gestures to deliver her point to the audience.