Is absurdity and humour reserved for us humans? Can computational absurdity be also considered humour (creatively funny)?
For some unbeknown reason, this popped into my head yesterday and I had the impetus to write about it
/“Roses are red/
/Violets are blue/
/This doesn’t rhyme”/
I can’t remember where I have seen it. But it stays with me when I need a laugh. I love absurd humour. A lot of people will think “huh, what?” as it is absolutely silly and pointless. Agreed.
But exactly that makes me crack up. It’s somehow a shock in expectations, which is what I think makes it funny.
This made me think on humour in general and how complex, individual, ingenious it is. How uniquely human. Or is it?
I thought that such an absurd but yet logical joke would be difficult to create computationally as it has cultural and literary undertones.
While I know that humour is a challenge tackled by various AI projects, I’ve now discovered that there is a whole field called Computational Humor that exist for 30 years.
Already in the mid 90s there were some simple puns generated by linguistic system:
/Q: What is the difference between leaves and a car?/
/A: One you brush and rake, the other you rush and brake./
/Q: What do you call a strange market?/
/A: A bizarre bazaar./
That’s pretty good for a system that was created before Windows 95!
Recently The Economist published an article A new AI language model generates poetry and prose about AI generated text for stories, poetry and comedy sketches.
The article starts with a poem
“Elon Musk by Dr Seuss” describing Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s run-ins with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“Musk,your tweets are a blight.
They really could cost you your job,
if you don’t stop
all this tweeting at night.”
…Then Musk cried,
“Why? The tweets I wrote are not mean,
I don’t use all-caps
and I’m sure that my tweets are clean.”
“But your tweets can move markets
and that’s why we’re sore.
You may be a genius
and a billionaire,
but that doesn’t give you the right to be a bore!”
The writer? GPT-3. A computer software. I hope in 5 years Netflix doesn't start producing Stand up comedy shows by Sophia.
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