Researchers have trained artificial intelligence to make jokes, but the advances are making many—and not just comedians—uncomfortable.
One theory of humor is that the degree to which we find something funny matches the degree to which a joke’s punch line deviates from the listener’s unconscious expectation. Thomas Winters, a doctoral student in artificial intelligence at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, uses this one as a case study: Two fish are in a tank. Says one to the other: “You man the guns, I’ll drive.”
The book is a distillation of a course he taught in New York City after scrutinizing decades of monologues and reverse engineering the most successful jokes. Toplyn sees Witscript as an extension of the work he did for decades in late-night TV: making people laugh, and therefore making them feel less alone.
Toplyn counters that critics overlook how much communication follows simple formulas, even the funny kind. “Rodney Dangerfield: ‘I get no respect.’ That’s a formula. Or Jeff Foxworthy: ‘You may be a redneck if.’ There are plenty of formulas in comedy, and some of them are right on the surface,” Toplyn says.
“I don’t think it’s really possible to build a true AI-based comedy that relies on understanding the emotions of another person or the context,” he says. “What we can do is to bring that into life ourselves.”
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