What happens when you point AI at one of the most unapologetically human competitions there is?
That’s the question Samantha Smitte is answering, by using a team of AI agents to help her compete in a beauty pageant. We’re following this journey as part of Agentic Business Schooled, and in this first episode we start at the beginning.
After more than a decade at IBM working across data, analytics, and AI, Samantha left the company and found herself, almost by accident, drawn toward the world of pageants. Not because she immediately saw an AI use case, but because something about the arena (its judgment, its vulnerability, its demand for confidence under pressure) felt like the perfect place to test a thesis she’d been developing. The key question is what does AI look like when it’s built for individual human flourishing rather than enterprise efficiency?
So she applied to compete in Miss New York USA. She’s documenting the whole experiment as Prompt & Poise, with Business Schooled’s Daryl Pereira aiding her along the way. She has built a team to help her get there: six AI agents, each standing in for a role you’d normally find on a professional pageant staff.
Six Agents, One Human
There’s Aria, who holds the throughline of Samantha’s personal narrative and values. Lumen handles social content ideas. Scout monitors real-time news so she’s never caught off guard by a current-events question. Sage is the wellness and mindset coach she turns to on low days, modeled partly on the tough-love energy of thought leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk. Elise is the stylist, tracking pageant history and etiquette down to the debate over six-inch heels versus a sensible kitten heel. And Vera preps her for interviews, pulling patterns from questions asked at other state pageants earlier in the competition cycle.
None of them can do the thing that actually matters on stage. That’s down to Samantha.
Where the Line Holds
That’s the boundary Samantha keeps returning to: AI can prepare you. It can’t replace you. Her agents help her rehearse, research, and steady her nerves, but nobody, and nothing, can walk the stage for her. The interview panel, the few minutes of eye contact, the physical poise built from weeks of practicing a walk in heels — that’s hers alone. If anything, handing the preparation work to AI freed her up to focus more, not less, on the parts of the experience only a human can deliver.
Daryl, who’s aiding Samantha on the Prompt & Poise project, draws a parallel to his own career in marketing, where digital tools were once expected to make human judgment obsolete. They didn’t. What changed was which skills mattered, and Samantha’s experiment suggests the same shift is happening again. As AI absorbs more of the deterministic work, distinctly human traits like trust, taste, charisma, and the willingness to be uncomfortable in public become more valuable, not less.
Samantha isn’t trying to prove AI can win her a crown. She’s testing whether it can help someone build the confidence to attempt something that once felt out of reach. Win or lose, she’s already gathered the real prize: proof that with a little persistence, anyone can build a team of AI collaborators pointed at whatever dream they’ve shelved as unrealistic.
AI can prepare you. It still can’t replace you. And maybe that’s the whole point.
Follow the rest of the Prompt & Poise experiment, or connect with Samantha directly on LinkedIn.