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.