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About

Matti Wilks is a developmental psychologist whose research sits at the intersection of moral psychology and human-robot interaction. Her work investigates how children and adults perceive the moral standing of artificial intelligences—asking fundamental questions about when and why we grant moral rights to robots, chatbots, and other non-human agents. In her highly cited 2019 paper, “Children’s perceptions of the moral worth of live agents, robots, and inanimate objects” (62 citations), Wilks demonstrated that even young children distinguish between living and artificial entities in moral terms. Her subsequent developmental studies (2021, 2024) have traced how beliefs about robots’ mental lives and vulnerability shift across childhood, revealing that children may be more willing than adults to extend moral consideration to machines. Her most recent work (2025) expands this framework to include diverse AI systems, from self-driving cars to chatbots, examining how perceptions of mind and morality shape trust and responsibility attribution. With over 95 citations across her core publications, Wilks is establishing herself as a leading voice in the emerging field of developmental robot ethics, offering critical insights into how our moral circles expand—and where they may stop.