Too Much Free Time

Too Much Free Time

by Mike Masnick




Beauty In The Eye Of The Android

from the well,-my-robot-said-she's-pretty... dept

Ever reticent dsg writes in with a link to a story about some researchers who have build a robotic head that (they say) can determine just how attractive a female is to a male. It doesn't work the other way around because the researchers believe that attraction for females isn't only based on looks alone. Seems like we've got a sexist robot. Anyway, the robot apparently can determine whether it's looking at a male or female, and if it's a female can give it an "attractiveness" score, based on her "feminitiy" charactersitics. It's sort of like an automated "hotornot". The company making the robot says it can be useful as a sort of automatic receptionist. I don't quite see why. How useful is it for a robot to be able to pick out the more attractive women in the crowd? Does this mean that now even the robots will be fawning over the "pretty" people? If I walk into an office, and even the robot receptionist is paying more attention to the attractive woman, how does that make me feel? Update: Here's another article about the robot that says the robot will tell women if they should be wearing more or less makeup and how that will impact their "attractiveness" score.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments

(Flattened / Threaded)

    Feb 12th, 2003 @ 10:47am
  • How useful is it for a robot to be able to pick ou

    by Joe Schmoe


    BouncerBot!

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  • Feb 12th, 2003 @ 11:38am
  • All they've managed to do...

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...is provide reasonably compelling proof that no women took part in the design of the robot.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  • Feb 12th, 2003 @ 11:48am
  • Oh goodie

    by dorpus

    Now we can make robots say the things that us humans can't tell women:

    "Really? You look much older."
    "That's a big red dress."
    "You looked much better before your haircut."
    "You remind me of this homeless woman."

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now.
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML
Save me a cookie
  • Plain Text: A CRLF will be replaced by break <br> tag, all other allowable HTML is intact
  • HTML: No formatting of any kind is done without explicitly being written in
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <p> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>
Close
Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now.
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie

Search Techdirt
And now, a word from our Sponsors..



Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Related Stories
Close
E-mail It