AI standup comic?
Artificial intelligence is prolific. It can write academic essays, diagnose diseases and power self-driving cars. But lucky for those who fear the eventual dominion of robot overlords, there is one area where artificial intelligence falls flat: humor. This should hearten comedy writers, who worry AI may take their already-scarce jobs. “ChatGPT Doesn’t Have Childhood Trauma,” said the sign of one writer at the Writers Guild a rallying cry for those who do not believe AI can create meaningful art. If you ask AI to be funny, it spits out clichés. “According to one 2023 study in which researchers asked for 1,008 ‘original’ jokes from ChatGPT, more than 90% of replies were the same 25 jokes … none of which were original,” said Mashable. AI can be funny unintentionally — “like the oblivious ‘straight man’ in sketch comedy” — but that is something else entirely. So why, with an endless breadth of knowledge at its disposal, is artificial intelligence seemingly incapable of making us laugh?
Comedy is situational, contextual and sophisticated. Even a simple meme can require several layers of understanding to “get.” While receiving her Ph.D. at Delaware University in 2021, Ishaani Priyadarshini wrote her dissertation about AI’s apparent inability to decipher memes, according to Popular Mechanics. “Internet memes serve as excellent checkpoints to ensure humans have the upper hand over machines,” Priyadarshini said to the outlet. Humor is subjective, but AI has no subjectivity or personal feelings about anything. The best comedy is littered with emotional truths, yet as the Writers Guild sign noted, AI has no childhood trauma, no well of empathy or lived experiences to pull from. “Large language models can be taught to whip up passable formulaic material because the propagation of hack jokes relies on systematized pattern-recognition processes,” said The Hollywood Reporter. “However, [experts] believe that original, path-breaking comedy will likely remain out of the conceptual reach of such machinery, at least in the near term.”
Another challenge: Many comedy routines push the boundaries of propriety and political correctness, while “AI, a conservative technology, doesn’t understand what taboos are, so it can’t break them,” said Guy Hoffman, a Cornell professor, to the Reporter. AI struggles to defy established norms because it has been programmed to follow them. Some experts believe AI could advance. A robot comedian named Jon went on a stand-up tour as part of a study by Oregon State University, though humans wrote and programmed his set list. It is “possible to evolve humor in something like the ChatGPT model by programming it to favor the incongruities and deviations from established norms that are the hallmarks of comedy.”
“It’s a little bit like an alien watching a standup routine and saying ‘oh, I can do that, I think I understand the pattern.'” “But [the alien] doesn’t realize there’s a lot more going on in the mind of the comedian and the minds of the audience.” “The consensus among experts is that AI, while a clear labor threat, will become a baseline tool for comedy writers, like a thesaurus or a search engine,” said the Reporter.
This is the computer speaking
My wife just completed a 40 week body building program this morning.
It’s a girl and weighs 7lbs 12 oz.
America is the only country where it takes more brains to make out your income tax forms than it does to make the money.
Scientists say the universe is made up of Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons.
They forgot to mention Morons.
Maybe if we start telling people the brain is an app they will start using it.
Why are artificial intelligences in movies always female?
Because they’re never wrong.
June 3rd Birthdays
1995 – Anne Winters, 1990 – Imogen Poots, 1989 – Katie Hoff, 1988 – Michelle Keegan
1925 – Tony Curtis, 1987 – Rafael Nadal, 1994 – Sean Berdy, 1986 – Al Horford