FEMBOT CROWNED FIRST RUNNER UP IN MISS WORLD PAGEANT

Outrage as fellow contestants cry anti-human discrimination

Dateline: 5 December 2023
Beauty queens around the world have taken to social media to complain about the judges' ruling in last night's Miss World beauty pageant. Erica (28), a Japanese humanoid robot, who is also a well-known television personality, was chosen as the first runner-up in the prestigious competition. Her fellow, human, competitors feel that Erica's artificial beauty and artificial intelligence gave her an unfair advantage over flesh and blood women who have to diet and endure gruelling physical training to stay in shape.
Says Tiffany Holiday, the current Miss America, who placed third in the competition, just behind the fembot; "It's just so unfair! Since when did beauty pageants become about perfection? We should embrace and celebrate the flaws of real human women. Real beauty, in my humble opinion, comes from imperfections. And she's much smarter than us too!"
Ms Holiday, along with several other Miss World finalists, now plans to take the Miss World pageant to court to challenge the legality of the ruling.
Japan shot back at Erica's detractors and defended their contestant in a media release.
"Erica is a citizen of Japan. She has as much right to participate in the pageant as any other Japanese woman. Criticizing her for being a 'robot' is no better than discriminating against people based on skin colour, race or gender. Artificially intelligent people are people too. We strongly condemn all forms of speciesism."
The organizers of Miss World issued a similar statement: "We are delighted to welcome Erica into the Miss World Family. She is a wonderful role model for inter-species tolerance and android-human relations."
Published: 11 October 2018
Links to related stories
1. Erica, the creepy robot that is so life-like she appears to 'have a soul', will replace a Japanese TV news anchor in April - Daily Mail, 30 January 2018
2. The agony of Sophia, the world's first robot citizen condemned to a lifeless career in marketing - Wired, 1 June 2018
3. Beauty.AI's 'robot beauty contest' is back – and this time it promises not to be racist - Wired, 2 March 2017
4. MindBullet: DIGITAL CREATIONS BECOME MILLIONAIRES (Dateline 28 September 2023, Published 23 August 2018)
5. MindBullet: SOPHIA SEEKS ASYLUM (Dateline 9 November 2019, Published 9 November 2017)
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Comments

Doug Vining

Doug Vining Sentient robots in 20 years

A game about robots becoming human looks at the whole idea of robot rights, and sentient machines making choices, by 2038. Sophia has already promoted this idea on Twitter:


A FuturesForum post (titled: "Sentient robots in 20 years") refers to this MindBullet. The full FuturesForum post can be read here: http://www.futureworld.org/PublicZone/FuturesForum/BlogDetails.aspx?PostID=bee3cb1b-1c3d-40ab-b3b7-7b5a0e4ee335
Posted: 11 October 2018 at 09:02
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